Crossfire (19 page)

'A map? You don't need a map, sir.'

They didn't have any at Reception either. No
one who stayed at the Serena had ever asked for
one. Maps implied walking or giving a driver
directions. The manager said no Westerner
should go round Kabul on foot or without a
driver and escort.

He pointed me in the direction of the pastry
shop and asked me to wait there while they tried
to track one down. He was sorry I couldn't have
Magreb again but he was needed in the kitchen.
Was I sure I didn't want him to organize a
convoy with one of the security companies? It
would only take an hour or two.

'Thanks, but I'm quite sure.'

I headed for the pastry shop and ordered a
coffee. An Afghani in a suit walked past with
three women, two of them in the old-style
American desert camouflage, one in the new. The
talk was about contracts. I half listened, but my
attention was diverted by the black woman in the
old-style stuff. Her stomach was so pronounced
she had to be at least six months gone. It was
bizarre to see someone pregnant in uniform.

I picked up the
Afghan Times
to stop me lifting
the Tubigrip and picking at the scab. My arm still
hurt, but not so much that I was constantly thinking
about it.

A story about an Italian and his Afghan interpreter
who'd been kidnapped off the street a
week ago dominated the front page. The Taliban
had got hold of them. Their demands weren't
met, so they cut off their heads. The bodies had
been found on wasteground to the south of the
city. The newspaper urged Westerners not to
travel anywhere without an armed guard.

The three American women returned, carrying
the same little boxes with pink ribbon I'd seen
before. The ribbons were soon undone and the
boxes opened. They munched pastries. Maybe
she wasn't pregnant after all; maybe it was just
big-time wheat intolerance.

Eventually the manager arrived with a map.
One of the bellhops had been sent out to a local
bookshop to buy it.

I studied it as I finished my coffee. It showed
all the embassies, hospitals and main mosques,
and the ministry of this and the ministry of that.
It sort of correlated with what I remembered of
the satellite imagery, but I didn't know which
had been produced first. The map still showed
this hotel as the Kabul, so it was at least a year
old. It didn't really matter. It would still get me to
AM Net and the Gandamack.

I slipped it into the empty Bergen, which I
threw over my shoulder as I headed for the door.

Two businessmen in suits exited in front of me.
Both carried briefcases and dripped with sweat
as they waddled towards the 4x4 two-ship waiting
in the courtyard. Their BG watched as they
climbed aboard the rear vehicle. Then he took the
front right of the lead wagon, and they were
ready to go.

I walked towards the pedestrian door at the
left of the main gates. I couldn't waste time waiting
for Magreb to finish work and certainly
didn't want a security company to send a convoy.
I had to get on.

The guard from the Hiace sprang out of the
guardhouse. He lifted his upturned hand. 'No
Magreb? No car?'

I smiled and shook his hand. 'It's OK, I know
where I'm going. It's just round the corner.'

I overrode him with my happy face, and
machine-gun English that he didn't understand.
I just hoped I'd done it without pissing him off. I
might be running back in about five minutes and
needing that AK of his to spread the good news.

I turned left. I knew that the road soon bent
round to the right, towards a roundabout. The
second right after that would have me heading
north into the diplomatic quarter. The Internet
café was close to the Iranian embassy.

I was facing south. The sun was on my right. It
had maybe two and a half, three hours' burning
time left.

The air was hot but not sticky. Without
humidity to damp it down, dust was king. Every
vehicle carried a thick layer. A little kid of five or
six scrawled a message on a door panel with his
finger.

Traffic was heavy and slow-moving in both
directions. The pavements were clogged and
pedestrians spilled on to the road. People
dressed in grey, white and brown wove in and
out between the cars.

I passed the big mosque I'd seen from the cab.
Its twin towers were sheathed in scaffolding.
There was a big regeneration programme under
way. The signs stuck to the railings explained
that some nice Italians had signed the cheque.

The two-ship passed me, and the businessmen
swivelled and stared. I gave them a glare back
that said, 'Yeah, that's right, I'm walking.' What
else could I do? Like Basra, Kabul wasn't exactly
a hail-a-cab sort of place for foreigners. At least I
kept control of where I was going – and by the
look of things I'd be quicker on foot anyway. I
needed to recce the café in daylight.

I kept my head up and strode along as if I
belonged there, trying not to make myself look
like a target. The traffic on the road skirting the
mosque was at a standstill. I guessed it was a tailback
from the drunken-sailor roundabout, but
then I heard shouts and screams, amplified over
the speaker system. Fuck, here we go – a mad
mullah sparking everyone up on a demo, hatred
for the West, that sort of shit. Why couldn't he
have waited an hour?

I was against the clock here. I'd have to keep
going. AM Net was one of only three known
locations for Dom – I needed to find out how it
would look when I came back in the morning
and waited for whoever was sending the emails;
I didn't need to know how it looked at dark
o'clock when everyone had gone home. I also
didn't want to be on the streets at night, sticking
out even more like a sore thumb than I already
was. If I turned the corner to find a mob, I'd just
have to leg it.

Books were stacked by the hundred against
walls and railings. Guys in suits and local get-up,
and women, some in burqas, flicked through the
pages. Nobody seemed perturbed by the noise of
the demo. Stalls sold newspapers with headlines
and pictures of their war in both English and
Pashtun. Kabul used to be the capital of the
Mughal Empire. These boys had been playing
war for five hundred years.

I reached the roundabout. A bunch of
drunken-sailor policemen stood in the middle of
the mound. One of them yelled into a microphone
and gesticulated at vehicles like a TV
evangelist on speed. Behind him, a huge PA
system was mounted on the roof of their green
Toyota.

A guy selling olives tried to grab me. He
dipped a glass into a big drum and dragged
some out for me, but I brushed him off without
breaking my stride.

I didn't know if it was kicking-out time in
offices or some kind of public holiday, but there
were thousands on the streets. The traffic was
chaos, and the drunken sailors just added to it. It
would have been suicide to cross now to take the
right I wanted.

There was a metal pedestrian bridge just short
of the junction. A poster stretched along almost
the whole of its span. A smiling granddad type
with a shiny bald head and perfect white teeth
offered a free mountain bike in two languages to
anyone who just said no to drugs.

The bottom of the steps was seething with
newspaper, fruit and tea stalls. I pushed past
and took the steel stairs two at a time, bobbing
left and right to avoid people in the tunnel
created by the roof and the hoardings that lined
the sides.

I reached the far end and was about to come
down. A woman laden with shopping bags
laboured up the last couple of steps. I did my bit
and waited for her to pass. While I waited, I
looked down at the pavement.

Three guys in Gunga Din gear were staring up at
me, checking me out. Their faces were gaunt and
creased, a lot harder than anyone else's round here.
Each had a little flower in his waistcoat, and that
was the big giveaway. They were Taliban, down
from the hills for a few days' R&R after shooting at
ISAF or cutting off some Italian heads.

They watched me with total hatred in their
eyes. Those boys wanted to rip me apart.

I was committed. There was nothing I could do
but keep going down. If I turned and ran they'd
come after me. I had to front this out.

Both hands shot to my hip. I unzipped the
bum-bag with my left and jammed the right
inside. My fingers closed round the padding as if
it was a pistol grip.

They muttered to each other and exchanged a
quick glance under their cowpats.

Two of the traffic cops stepped into the frame
as I was about halfway down. They seemed
interested in finding out what the three were
getting sparked up about.

The cops looked at me, then at each other. At
that point they also spotted the small flowers and
turned on their heels.

Fuck it. I got about three-quarters of the way
towards the cowpats and flicked my left hand to
wave them back. 'Fuck off! Fuck off!'

People who'd been making their way up the
stairs melted to either side. The ones right at
the bottom decided they'd gone off the idea
altogether.

'Fuck off! Fuck off!'

Three sets of eyes locked on to mine, but I kept
coming. They looked at each other again,
suddenly unsure what to do. This was the OK
Corral, Kabul-style.

They edged back a step or two.

I had to keep the initiative. 'Fuck off! Out of
my fucking way!'

They were close enough to spit at me, and they
did. They growled what I guessed were
obscenities.

I pointed at each one in turn. 'Fuck – off –
now
!'

I moved past them and on to the pavement.
The two policemen were standing under the
bridge, eyes fixed on the very interesting
summits of TV Hill.

I leapt the barrier and ran like a man possessed
against the flow of traffic.

Horns honked. Angry fists waved. My
sunglasses bounced up and down on my chest as
I pumped my arms.

I dodged, wove and jinked round vehicles.
Drivers went ballistic. A chorus of shouts went
up behind me.

Fuck 'em. I was making distance. That was all
that mattered.

Up ahead, the street broadened into a wide
avenue bordered by imposing buildings hidden
behind high walls. Their tops bristled with
security lights and concertinas of razor wire.
Plywood huts jutted on to the pavement. Guards
sat outside on plastic chairs.

A three-ship Humvee patrol was speeding
down the road towards me. I jumped back on to
the pavement. The pedestrian traffic had thinned
and the Taliban hadn't followed. They wouldn't
come up this far into the embassy area. There
was too much security.

The centre Hummer towed a trailerload of
suitcases and camouflage-pattern day sacks. The
gunner on its .50 cal jerked his thumb at the rear
of his vehicle, shouted and screamed at the traffic
behind. As they passed, I could see a big red sign
dangling beneath him. Judging by the way he
waved his arms, it said something like
Fuck off,
suicide-bombers
. The Corollas and orange-and-whites
didn't take the slightest bit of notice.

I slowed to walking pace to get my breath
back. My arm throbbed. I began to see one or two
more white faces, but they were all in vehicles.

On my right, a big set of gates swung open and
two black Cadillac Escalade SUVs surged on to
the pavement. Both had a big antenna on the
roof. I couldn't tell what nationality they were.
There weren't any flags flying on any of the
buildings, no ID to show which embassy was
which.

The two guys in the front wagon glanced
through their wraparounds at the dickhead in
the T-shirt and Timberlands, then studied the
heavy traffic carefully before driving straight
across all the lanes. The Highway Code didn't
seem to apply to them.

It was only when I got level with the closing
gates that I saw a small plaque. It was the
Chinese embassy. The plywood huts outside
were painted grey and red. I half expected to see
Red Guards with flags sitting on the chairs
instead of the local lot.

I approached the first shed. The four guards
glared at me from under their hats. Two got to
their feet. They didn't look happy, but they were
paid to look that way. This was Kabul.

I smiled and gave them a wave as I got nearer,
as if I was on a morale-boosting visit. 'Hello,
mate, how are you?' I held out a hand, shook,
and kept walking. I got a smile back from the
smaller of the two. He touched his chest and
gave me a nod. The next guy offered a hand. I did
it on the move, not missing a step.

There were still remnants of the Russian occupation
here. In an open space between two walls
lay the rusting hulk of an armoured personnel
carrier, its tracks splayed out from the wheels
and the mother of all big fuck-off holes ripped
into its side by a HESH (high-explosive squash
head) round.

I pulled out the mobile and sparked it up. I
went into Tools and made sure Number ID was
off, then called Basma.

Two armoured vehicles came down the street
towards me and stopped. I couldn't tell whose
army they belonged to. All I knew was they were
green and had six wheels. Matching green uniforms
sprang out, helmeted, body-armoured, all
tooled up.

Her mobile rang and rang. She probably
ignored calls from numbers she didn't recognize
just as much as the ones she did. But at least her
mobile was still on, and if it stayed that way I'd
locate her – once I'd found myself a fixer.

I was nearly on top of the armour by the time I
closed down. The arm flashes told me they were
Turks. One wagonload ran across the street to
cover from that side. Maybe one of the walls
belonged to their embassy. Whatever, it looked
routine. It wasn't me they were interested in.

I turned the corner and immediately hit
another set of guardhouses. I smiled, shook a
hand or two. A sign said the steel double gates
belonged to the Embassy of the Islamic Republic
of Iran.

Jadayi Sulh was signed on the junction
opposite. Flower Street had to be close by.

I turned back to the guards and gave them a
smile. 'The hospital?' I pointed down the road.
'The war-victims hospital?'

I gave them a peek under the Tubigrip.

They had a quick discussion and a laugh, then
showed me.

I ran across the road in the direction they'd
pointed.