by Lee Stone
“Ashgabat,” the crowd all nodded and repeated when they heard the old man mention their destination. Some of them started fumbling around with grubby looking local currency and waving it towards Lockhart.
Lockhart could have kicked himself. He was planning to go to Ashgabat next. It was the next big city along the main road. Which mean Tyler would know exactly where he was going, too. And now he couldn’t change his plan because he had a bunch of locals waving their money at him from the back of the bus.
“Not tonight” Lockhart shook his head. He grabbed the map that David Barr had given him back in Kandahar. He pointed to a town about sixty miles away. The old man craned his neck to see what Lockhart was showing him.
“Tejen?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Lockhart, nodding his head. He had grabbed about four hours sleep on the road north of Herat last night, but he had been driving for hours and there was no way that he was going another three hundred miles tonight. “Tejen tonight, and Ashgabat tomorrow.”
The old man looked at him for a moment and then turned to the other passengers and explained the news. Lockhart braced himself for a tough conversation, but it was non-negotiable. If they didn’t like it, they could walk. After a minute, the old man turned back to Lockhart at the wheel. The passengers seemed fairly happy with the deal. The man explained one of the passengers had family in Tejan, and that they could sleep in the community hall for the night.
They arrived an hour later and the woman who had family in Tejen got off the bus first. She disappeared inside a municipal building for a moment. It was painted a terracotta color, but the paint was peeling in patches, revealing the concrete underneath. It didn’t look like the Ritz, but it had been a long day and Lockhart was ready to sleep just about anywhere.
The woman emerged from the building and beckoned the passengers in. Once they were all off, Lockhart went to park the bus out of sight. He was happier staying here than in Ashgabat. It was suitably anonymous, just a dot on the map. Lockhart was careful where he parked.
The Russians say that sailors should trust in God, but keep rowing towards the shore. Muslims have a Hadith that believers should trust Allah, but to tie up their camel. There is a similar Jewish fable. It all boils down to the same thing: fate is quicker to help people who help themselves.
In a way, it would be a blessing if somebody drove off in the night with the yellow bus and its payload of dollars. But Lockhart felt a duty to return the money to Afghanistan, and he also needed the bus to get himself home. So, he tied up his camel, parking the bus so tight to the side of the building that nobody could get into the luggage compartments.
Lockhart wondered how much money was in the suitcases. Judging by the number of fifty-dollar notes crammed into the one blue bale he had opened, he estimated that there must be much more than a million dollars in each bale. There were thirty bales. He’d spend whatever it took to get home safely, but he couldn’t wait to get rid of the rest. It was dangerous and would only bring trouble. He locked the doors and headed after the passengers.
There were several dormitory rooms in the building with rickety metal bunk beds crammed into them. They had thin mattresses on top, which had been worn down by myriad travelers. The men and women separated, with none of them complaining about their unexpected overnight stay. Lockhart and the old man ended up sharing a room by themselves. The only problem was the woman in the black burka who insisted on having a room to herself.
The other passengers guessed that she wanted some privacy in grief. None of them wanted to upset her, so they arranged for her to sleep in the smallest room on her own.
Lockhart lay on the bed and thought about his next move. His priority was to get as far from Afghanistan as possible. He had known that someone would come after him; he just hadn’t realized that they would arrive so quickly, or that they’d be so formidable. Whoever he was, he seemed to know where Lockhart was heading. Lockhart wondered again whether there might be a tracker buried along with the money. Was it bleeping away now, outside against the wall of the building?
There was nothing he could do about it. There was no way for Lockhart to check inside the tightly baled notes. Unwrapping the packages would be a disaster. He would just have to take his chances and hope that he was being paranoid. He did his best to forget about it.
Someone had folded a pile of blankets on top of one of the bunks, and Lockhart grabbed one each for him and the old man. There were no bed sheets, so he slept in his clothes, draping the blanket over him more for comfort than for warmth. After his long journey, it felt like heaven. Lockhart fell into a deep sleep.
He woke up eight hours later, soon after dawn. The old man was shaking his shoulders. He was leaning over Lockhart whose bleary eyes struggled to focus on him for a moment.
“Ashgabat?” he asked, smiling like an impish child who had just woken his father from a well-earned night of rest. It was a good idea to get back on the road early. Lockhart nodded and groaned and used his stomach muscles to pull himself up.
“Okay,” he said with a smile to the old man. “Let’s go to Ashgabat.”
Chapter Thirty
Tejen, Turkmenistan
“Now I been out in the desert, just doin' my time
Searchin' through the dust, lookin' for a sign
If there's a light up ahead well brother I don't know
But I got this fever burnin' in my soul”
– Johnny Cash, Further on Up the Road
By the time Lockhart and the old man got outside, the rest of the passengers were all ready to get going. The sun was shining, and the bus was still parked behind the building, unscathed. Lockhart couldn’t help wondering where the man from the marketplace was waking up this morning. Was he still in Mary, or had he traveled through the night to Ashgabat? Lockhart shook his head. He didn’t even know whether the danger was lying in front of him or behind.
There was some good news though. Lockhart figured that the crowd of passengers around his bus might be useful. A guy driving an empty bus across a country would look far more suspicious than a driver with a coach full of passengers. He needed to head towards Ashgabat anyway, and the locals would complete his disguise perfectly. He ushered them all back onto the bus.
None of them had much luggage apart from one clumsy woman who had two scrawny caged cockerels. The birds looked annoyed rather than alarmed as she bashed them against nearly every seat she passed as she made her way to the back of the bus. Lockhart turned the key, and the bus shuddered into life and purred as it idled. It sounded happy to be back in service after its time languishing empty in the Afghan bone-yard. Eager to please.
By midday, the bus was halfway to Ashgabat, having managed the tarmac road with no problems. They had passed more camels and green grass, but most of the horizon was dusty and dry. From time to time they would drive through vast areas that had been irrigated by the Russians, and the roadside would burst into color; poppies and grassland and cereals sprung up from the sand. Wild seeds, blown on the wind for hundreds of miles, had been lucky enough to land here, and clusters of alien color had taken hold.
After thanking him profusely as they boarded, the passengers who had commandeered his bus had paid no further attention to their driver. He had kept an eye in his rear-view mirror, enjoying their company. Strangely, the bus shuddered and jolted less with their ballast. The hum of their conversation was soothing compared to the rattle of yesterday’s empty carcass.
The passengers had paired off as the journey had worn on, and all of them except for the widow were deep in conversation. They talked, laughed, and nodded at one another as Turkmenistan’s Mountains rose and fell in the distance.
As he drove, Lockhart wondered about what was happening back in Kandahar. David Barr was small-time and Lockhart figured that he would be in big trouble for losing the consignment. Kandahar would be a dangerous place for anyone who fell in with the wrong crowd. Even worse if you fell out with them.
For all the contentm
ent that his new passengers brought, Lockhart still felt uneasy. Perhaps it was just coming to terms with his perilous situation; the vast quantity of cash under the floor of the bus and the certainty that someone would come after him to retrieve it.
There was no sign of the huge soldier in front or behind. But even as he drove along the straight road to Ashgabat, Lockhart felt as though he was being watched. They hadn’t passed another car for twenty minutes, and he could see nothing behind him in his mirrors. There was no obvious cause for alarm, but as a tourist, Charlie Lockhart had learned to listen to his intuition and his heart.
By lunchtime, they reached a small town called Tejan. Lockhart parked in the marketplace and the people behind him spilled off the bus, keen to stretch their legs for twenty minutes. A couple stayed close by, in case the unfamiliar driver tried to depart without them, but the others wondered in amongst the market traders.
Only the widow hung back. She didn’t seem keen to get up from her seat, but Lockhart made it clear that he was locking the bus and that she needed to get up. As she rose from her seat, he was again taken by her size. She didn’t speak as she passed him, and Lockhart wondered whether that was normal for someone in mourning. His travels had made him enjoy different cultures and traditions, but he still felt uneasy around people who covered their faces.
Before Lockhart had decided what to make of the widow, she was gone, lost in the market. He didn’t trust her, but she was not his problem. Whatever her story, she would be off the bus in Ashgabat in four hours' time. But twenty minutes later, when the passengers returned to the bus, the widow was nowhere to be seen.
The rest of the group piled back onto the bus, again they nodded and smiled at Lockhart as they boarded. The woman who had bought the two chickens along was beaming. She had apparently exchanged the birds for a hungry-looking goat, which she pulled onto the bus by one of its horns. For a moment Lockhart considered whether goats ought to be allowed on his bus, and then smiled at his own British lust for regulation. He clapped as the woman pulled her new prize along the aisle, and the passengers joined in, laughing.
They waited for five more minutes, but the widow didn’t resurface. The mood felt lighter without her, and it became clear that she had no friends on the bus. The goat and the passengers grew restless, and eventually Lockhart resumed his seat at the front and turned on the engine. His fuel gauge needle was about half full, and a red light on the console flashed briefly but then went out. The hydraulics hissed as he closed the door, a sound which made Lockhart feel like he was five years old, a kid pretending to drive an imaginary bus at school.
As they drove out of the marketplace, and the passengers were settling down, they hit an almighty sandstorm. Something was kicking up a huge amount of dust just a few meters up the road to their right. Suddenly, as the people on the bus strained to see what was causing the storm, two masked men appeared from within the cloud. They were working quickly together, pointing sticks and calling short instructions to one another.
They looked young and strong, and on high alert. Their eyes swept up and down the road for dangers. They were wearing traditional Turkmen clothes, and one carried a rolled-up rug on his back. The other was carrying a large water vessel as he scrambled from side to side, arms outstretched, preparing for whatever was about to emerge from the dust.
Then from behind them, hundreds of sheep came swirling like a shoal of fish across the road, with a black mongrel dog chasing behind them. Near to the dog was a third man on horseback.
Lockhart remembered the old Turkmenistan saying which had been framed on his wall in the hotel room, below the picture of Genghis Khan; Water is a Turkmen's life, a horse is his wings, and a carpet is his soul.
Shepherds had probably bought their flocks here to market since the village began. They would sell a few and exchange a few and then head back out to pasture for another week. Lonely work.
Inside the bus, the passenger with the goat looked crestfallen. If she’d been in the marketplace when the new sheep had arrived, she might have got a better deal. But if they had traveled with their regular driver, he wouldn’t have stopped in this village at all. So much of life is about being in the right place at the right time, she thought. Then she reached into her pocket and retrieved some grain that she offered to her new goat. It nibbled and licked at her hand gratefully.
Despite the dust and the commotion, the bus kept rolling forward. Lockhart remembered a piece of advice Ajmal had given him back in Quetta before they set out on the convoy.
“If something strange is happening, assume that it’s something bad. And if something bad is happening, don’t stop driving.”
The advice had served him well during the attack at Marni Sar. Suddenly the flock of sheep in the road in front of the bus panicked and split in two. A dark figure thrust out from the middle of the dust cloud, sending the flock off in different directions. It was the mysterious widow, but she didn’t look like the sedate woman the passengers had seen earlier. She was running full pelt through the dust and the startled animals. Her strides were forceful and muscular and she was clawing at the air to get back towards the departing bus. As she ran alongside them she banged on the doors heavily with her palm.
Lockhart was about to open the door when two more figures burst out from the dust away to the right, running at full speed towards the woman. Lockhart hesitated for a moment. He had suspected the woman before, and now his instincts had been proven right. The men chasing her were uniformed police, and although they hadn’t yet drawn them, they were reaching for the holstered guns on their hips.
Lockhart had to make a decision.
This really wasn’t his problem, and with millions of dollars in the luggage compartment, he didn’t want to get embroiled in a local dispute. He was about to press harder on the gas when the widow tore away at her veil and banged on the window again. It was a shocking revelation. Not only was the widow a man, but she - or rather he - had been hiding a full beard under his black veil.
“I’m a journalist,” he yelled with an accent that Lockhart couldn’t place. “Open the fucking door!”
The dust was getting into the widow’s lungs now that he had removed his veil, and as Lockhart opened the doors he fell into the bus coughing and spluttering. Lockhart could see the policemen yelling in frustration and shaking their fists at the bus as the sheep slowly swirled back into a single flock around them.
Lockhart kept an eye on the road as he rumbled forwards, but glanced occasionally at the man who had now slumped into the first seat in the bus and was regaining his breath.
“Thank you,” the man gasped. “Thanks very much.”
He looked frightened rather than dangerous, but Lockhart didn’t trust him as far as he could spit.
“Take off your clothes, please.”
The journalist’s laugh faded as Lockhart gave him a hard stare.
“You’ve been hiding a beard from me and the rest of these passengers all morning, and unless you want to get off the bus, I want to know what else you’re hiding.”
The man reached into his burka and pulled out a blackberry and a camera and an iPhone.
“That’s all I’ve got,” he said, placing them on the floor in front of him. “Satisfied?”
Lockhart stopped the bus sharply, and the doors opened again, the hydraulics startling the goat. The widow looked around the bus, but was met by hard stares. A few hundred meters back, the policemen straightened up as they heard the hiss of the brakes.
Reluctantly the man removed his dark robes, revealing a pair of beige combat trousers and a dark brown top. Lockhart started the bus again as he asked for the man’s passport. The journalist complied.
“Which newspaper do you work for?” Lockhart asked, as he studied the man’s credentials and tried to keep driving in a straight line. He was Spanish.
“I’m a stringer. I get calls from British agencies or newspapers, and if I like the sound of the story, I take it on.”
Lockhart
was piecing the guy together. Most likely, he was employed to report on stories that were too dangerous, too sensitive, or too illegal for staff writers. He was traveling on a Spanish passport and working for the English media, which meant the odds were that the story was political. Which meant he had probably been working over the border.
“Iran?”
The Spaniard looked at the bus driver. The guy was obviously fairly astute to have worked out where he was traveling to. But who was he? If he was a fellow journalist, or a mercenary, or a tourist, why the hell was he driving locals around on a beaten-up bus?
“Yes, Iran,” he confirmed, realizing he was in no position to ask questions at that moment. “And I’m finished now, heading home.”
Lockhart suggested that he should put the burka back on so as not to draw too much attention to them.
“I can take you to Ashgabat but then you’re on your own” he said, and he indicated that the Spaniard should head back along the bus to his original seat.
As he was getting to his feet and adjusting his burka, the Spaniard noticed the bright blue package tucked underneath the driver's seat. He had no idea what it contained, but he wasn’t a journalist by chance. He had a curious mind and a sharp wit.
Smuggler, he thought as he hid his beard and took his seat at the back.
By midafternoon the road had begun to run alongside a vast and tranquil river, and the land either side seemed more fertile. On the other side of the river just a few miles away was the border with Iran. At the nearest point, the bus drove within two miles of the boundary but continued along the M37 towards Ashgabat. Although all the passengers seemed suspicious of the bearded journalist, he sat quietly as the journey continued.
In the end, the trouble came from another passenger. They were about half an hour from Ashgabat when she started speaking hurriedly to the woman next to her. She became agitated and began calling out to the rest of the bus. Lockhart turned his head to see what was happening, and the woman with the goat started shouting at him.
