The Last Kestrel

by Jill McGivering

  He leaned back and drew on his cigarette. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘what’s your angle?’

  ‘The usual.’ She shrugged. ‘Life on the front line.’

  He nodded, eyes on her face, not looking convinced. ‘It’s a shit hole,’ he said. He leant towards her, lowered his voice. ‘One of the world’s greatest.’

  He drew on his cigarette. The smoke rose into the thick, hot air.

  ‘Corrupt as hell, this country,’ he said. He rubbed his fingers together to indicate money-grubbing. ‘Can’t trust them.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so.’ He tipped back his head and exhaled lazily. ‘Even the uniforms say so. Off the record. Ask Major Mack.’

  She wondered how many Afghans John actually knew. He was a master of the hack’s instant guide.

  ‘Modern democracy, here?’ he said. ‘All bollocks. They’re stuck in the Stone Age.’

  The soldier opposite them reached forward to the sand-filled mortar shell that served as an ashtray and stubbed out his cigarette. It splayed into sparks and died. Without acknowledging either of them, he heaved himself to his feet, all bulk and swagger, and left. A pause.

  The morning sat slow and still on their shoulders. The muffled whine of a radio or television drifted through to them from the nearest tent. Beyond the open metal fence, past the parked container trucks and military vehicles, miles of desert lay shimmering in the gathering heat. There’s nothing here to sustain life, she thought. No water, no natural shelter, no food. It’s utterly desolate. This is an artificial world, built from nothing in the middle of nowhere. The Afghans must think we’re crazy.

  ‘It’s like we’ve learnt nothing.’ Next to her, John’s one-sided conversation had reignited. ‘Two centuries spilling blood, trying to civilize this godforsaken land, and here we are, back again.’

  She stayed silent, waiting for him to finish. John was a man who liked to talk, not listen. Especially in conversation with a woman.

  ‘Of course it matters.’ He drew on his cigarette, snorted, exhaled skywards in a stream of smoke. ‘Regional security. India. Pakistan. Securing the borders. All that crap. But these guys we’re bankrolling? Money down the toilet.’

  He coughed, spat into the sand at his feet.

  ‘All at it. Stuffing their pockets,’ he said. ‘Bloody narco-state.’

  She sat quietly while he cleared his throat and started to smoke again. The heat was gathering. Already her skin was desiccating, scrubbed raw by the fine sand which invaded everything.

  ‘Do a patrol of police stations if you can. Great story.’

  She smiled to herself. That meant he’d already exhausted it.

  ‘Used syringes everywhere. Beards sitting around in dirty vests. Half of them stoned. God help us. And they’re the good guys.’

  She seized her chance to cut in. ‘Heard one of the translators got killed,’ she said. She tried to keep her tone light. ‘Guy called Jalil. You come across him?’

  He stuck out his lip, shook his head. ‘Heard something about that. Ambushed, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Was he?’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s what I heard. Last week? Didn’t file. Two Brits died around then. In a Snatch. That was big. You see that one?’

  He paused, thinking it over, then turned to her, his eyes shrewd. ‘Why’re you asking about the Afghan anyway?’

  ‘No reason.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘Just wondered.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette, stretched, sighed. The fumes of dying ash mingled with the smell of his sweat. ‘Drugs,’ he said, ‘betcha. He must’ve been on the take.’ He got to his feet. ‘Or unlucky. Wrong time, wrong place.’

  He coughed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes were sunken. The putt of helicopter blades came to them softly from a distance, strengthening as they listened. They peered up into the sun-bleached sky. ‘Chinook,’ he said.

  The throb of the blades was steadily building. She got up too to get under canvas before it came in low and whipped up a frenzy of sand.

  ‘Dying for a drink.’ He looked at her. ‘You didn’t by any chance…?’

  ‘Booze? ’Fraid not.’

  He tutted, sighed. ‘Well, not long to go.’

  They walked back together to the main drag, their boots clattering on the plastic military decking underfoot. As they separated, he pointed a stout finger at her, all fake bonhomie. ‘I’m moving off again this afternoon. But you keep safe. Hear me?’

  She nodded, shook his outstretched hand. ‘I always keep out of trouble,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Yeah. Right. Like hell you do.’

  She stood for a moment, watching him walk away. The thick set of his shoulders showed just the beginnings of a stoop. Anything happened to me, she thought, he’d be licking his chops in the rush to file. And then probably spell my name wrong. She turned down between the rows of tents towards her own, thinking of the vodka stashed away in her second shampoo bottle.

  Inside the darkened tent, she sat on the edge of her cot and listened to the breathing of the women sleeping around her, overlaid with the stutter of the air conditioning. The joys of shift work. She closed her eyes and let herself think.

  John was wrong about Jalil. He wouldn’t have been mixed up in drugs or on the take. She was sure of that. If he’d been a less principled young man, heaven knows, he’d be alive and well now and far away from Helmand. She ran her hands heavily down her face. There was no escaping it. Whoever pulled the trigger, it was her fault he’d ended up in Helmand at the wrong end of a gun.

  Jalil had come to her at the guesthouse in Kabul on the final afternoon of her last visit. They had worked together as usual for a fortnight, companionable but businesslike, sharing long days of dusty travel, conducting interviews in airless rooms across the capital and in hot, fly-thick shacks beyond it. They’d endured running sweat and toxic smells and sat together on filthy floors, sipping chai and nibbling on plates of stale sweetmeats and pastry that were barely edible but necessary to consume for the sake of politeness.

  Now, on the final day of that visit, she had her story and had withdrawn to write. She was sitting in relative comfort at the desk in her room at the guesthouse, with pots of tea and good food to order and the luxury of empty hours ahead of her. She’d need them. Phil, her editor back in London, was already pushing her for copy, complaining she’d taken too long. He usually gave her a decent amount of time to research each story. A week–or even two, sometimes. But he expected a lot in return. Six- or seven-thousand-word pieces that broke new ground and were carefully crafted. Now she had the facts but she needed to focus on writing and rewriting until she had a news-feature that even Phil would consider strong enough to print.

  It was at this point, when she was halfway through her second draft, that she was interrupted by a hesitant tapping at her door. She opened it to find Jalil, looking out of place amongst the kitsch foreign decor and rich fittings of the hallway.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, without thinking. Of course he wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be proper. Instead he stayed hovering there on the public side of the threshold with growing awkwardness. She sighed to herself and signalled to him to wait while she went back to her laptop and reluctantly turned it off. The story had just been coming together. Now her flow of thought was lost and she was irritated.

  They sat together in the parched garden on wicker chairs with stained cotton cushions. She tried to press him to accept a drink–tea or fresh juice–and he politely refused. He was struggling, she could see, under a great weight of embarrassment. Her attempts to lighten the atmosphere by chatting to him only prolonged the awkwardness. Finally she fell silent and they sat, side by side, looking out at the darting birds and the startlingly bright colours of the flowerbeds, and she waited until he was ready to speak.

  ‘It is only a loaning,’ he said. ‘I will pay back everything. More than everything. Interests as well.’ He spoke carefully into the still heat of the garden, his voice
stilted as if he’d practised his speech many times. ‘We will make a proper agreement. I will pay you this much in this year and this much in the next. Like this. Very proper.’

  He had the offer of a place at Pennsylvania State University to study engineering, he said. He’d applied there because the distant cousin of a friend of the family lived nearby.

  ‘All the living is no problem for me,’ he said. ‘I can sleep anywhere. They have some bedroom with their sons. That’s enough for me. And I can eat with them at night-time. Cheap food. Afghan food.’ He twisted and untwisted his fingers in his lap, still unable to look her in the face.

  Once he had his degree, he could get a good job, he said. Then he would have enough money to support his mother and sister and pay for his little brother to attend a good school.

  ‘Everything I will pay back,’ he said again. ‘This loaning is for the fees.’ A hint of pleading had entered his voice. ‘The fees are very costly in United States. So much of money.’ He tailed off. The quietness rushed in and smothered them both.

  She tried to think how to phrase a reply. As she was finally about to open her mouth to try, he spoke again.

  ‘Some of this money’, he said, ‘my relatives can give me. And from friends of my mother. Men who knew my father also. But not all.’

  He hesitated. ‘I need still more money. Maybe two, three thousand US dollars.’ He was staring at his feet, his long toes, flecked with dark hairs, at the edge of his sandals. ‘It is so much of money. I know. It dishonours me to ask. But it is just…’ He broke off as if his English were failing him. ‘This is a very difficult matter…’

  He left the phrase hanging. A cat, its pregnant belly hanging low, ran across the grass in front of them. It was a mangy thing, flea-bitten and feral. They watched together as it crouched in the flowerbed, hunting.

  She had been asked for money several times in her career by people she had grown to know well. People from developing countries who had no one else to ask. It was always for something significant. For a major operation for an elderly parent or for schooling for a child. She was a journalist, she told herself. An outsider who travelled, observed, reported and then moved on. She had to stay separate, to be objective. Don’t interfere. Don’t cross the line.

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said. She too was staring at his toes, at the neat square cut of his nails. ‘Really. But I just can’t. I am sorry. Perhaps I could—’

  ‘Of course.’ He interrupted her at once, nodding and waving his hand as if to bat away the awkwardness between them. ‘I’m sorry. Please. Forgive me.’

  Suddenly they were both on their feet, making hasty, nervous movements and hiding their shame with a flurry of meaningless arrangements, confirming what time the car would take her to the airport the next morning and discussing the final settlement of the driver’s bill.

  Afterwards she had gone back to her room, ordered a fresh pot of chai sabz and a plate of Afghan bread and jam and immersed herself in her story. It was only later, when her friend at The New York Times emailed to tell her about his death in Helmand, that she stopped, shaken, and really thought back. By giving up work with journalists and instead signing a contract to go into conflict zones and translate for the military, he was risking his life. Suddenly it became clear to her why he’d done it. He’d been desperate for the money so he could escape.

  ‘Ellen Thomas?’ Someone was hissing her name into the darkness, through the lifted tent flap. The tone was more accusation than question. When she emerged, a young soldier was pacing outside, looking impatient. ‘The Major sent me. Follow me.’

  He led her across the camp, then turned sharply right into a dim narrow corridor between hessian sandbag walls. Engineers corps, she thought. Build anything. He pushed open a plywood door and ushered her inside, down a hallway and into an office.

  It had the dead smell of an underground bunker, ripe with dust and recycled air. It was poorly lit by low-wattage bulbs, strung on wires that were pinned in loops along the wood ceiling struts like Christmas decorations. An old air-conditioning unit was panting against one wall, making memos and notices on the board above it flutter and crack.

  ‘Ellen?’

  A short, compact man rose from behind a desk and came forward to greet her. His gaze was direct, his eyes a surprising blue. Intense, she thought at once. Intelligent. He was muscular but the creases round his eyes suggested he must be about her age, forty something. His hair was blond and clearly thinning, the dome of his head glowing warmly in the mellow light, offset by arches of thicker growth above his ears.

  ‘Major McKay,’ he said. ‘But call me Mack. Everyone does.’

  He pumped her hand, his fingers hard in hers.

  ‘Thought we’d lost you,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

  He nodded to the young soldier who bustled about at a water heater with polystyrene cups and powdered milk and handed them drinks.

  ‘Well.’ He folded himself onto a chair and gestured to her to sit too. ‘The famous Ellen Thomas. I’m honoured.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.’ The coffee smelt strong and stale.

  He smiled, showing even teeth. Somewhere behind him, a clock was ticking. Civilizing the desert, she thought. War was surreal.

  ‘Read a lot of your stuff,’ he said. ‘Brave woman. Hope we’re going to pass the Thomas test here.’

  She smiled back. ‘Not brave,’ she said. ‘I just report.’

  His manner was confident. Yes, she thought, in a crisis, this was a man you’d trust.

  ‘Not sure I always agree with you, though.’ He tutted. ‘That piece on Basra.’

  Oh no, she thought. A man with opinions on my work. She lowered her lips to her polystyrene cup and watched his face as he took issue with her argument on Iraq. His look was sharp. He was articulate, clearly. A good adversary. But a debate on Basra wasn’t what she needed right now. Iraq already seemed a long time ago.

  She pretended to listen, nodding in increments and scanning the room. A war room. Shared and impersonal. Desks piled with folders and papers. Behind him, a flip chart with notes written across it in marker pen in a loopy, sloping hand. ‘What are we fighting for?’ read the heading, underlined. Then a list: Cathedrals. Real cider. Bangers and mash. Small cottages. Little old ladies in teashops. She wondered which young wags had brainstormed that and from which part of rural England they’d been plucked. She became aware again of the clock’s tick. Mack had stopped talking.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ she said. ‘What’s this offensive?’

  He paused, watching her, then got to his feet. ‘We’re about to take new ground.’ He drew her across to an area map tacked to the wall and used his pen as a pointer. ‘Here’s the camp, where we are now. Early tomorrow morning, B and C Company will move into position in this area of desert here.’ He pointed to a white space some distance north into the desert. No tracks were marked. The only roads snaked from the camp in different directions, to the south and west. ‘The Danes will provide backup here. The Estonians here. Once they’re in place, B and C Company will launch a fresh attack here. Crossing the river at this point. Into this area of the green belt.’

  She nodded, taking in the distances, the contours. There were several villages marked in the target area, clusters of squares and dots.

  ‘How well fortified is it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Pretty well. The enemy’s been dug in there for more than two years.’

  They’ll have an established underground bunker system then, she thought. Carefully constructed traps.

  ‘Mines?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  She looked again at the map, trying to imagine the terrain. ‘So you expect resistance. Probably a lot.’

  ‘We’re always prepared for contact with the enemy,’ he said.

  ‘Any estimate of timings?’ She pointed to the first village, high on a ridge above the river. ‘When do you think you’ll reach here? Noon?’

  ‘Depends.’ His eyes w
ere thoughtful. ‘Depends how much resistance there is.’

  She finished her coffee. She wanted to sort out her kit and repack for the field. Today might be her last chance to eat fresh food, shower and get some sleep.

  ‘Now,’ he was saying, ‘you need to have a think. I have to make it clear to you: it will be dangerous out there. We can’t guarantee your safety. You understand that? So you need to weigh up the risks against the gains. Of course, you’re a reporter. You’ve got a job to do. But you may think it wise to stay in camp tomorrow. I can arrange a briefing for you here. Then the following day we can review…’

  She dropped her cup into the dustbin and turned to face him. He came to the end of his speech and paused. ‘Don’t feel,’ he said, ‘you have to give me an answer now. Think it over.’

  ‘I’ve thought,’ she said. ‘What time do we leave?’

  3

  Almost two weeks earlier

  Late in the night, a sound woke Hasina. She opened her eyes with a jolt and listened. Abdul, her husband, breathed heavily beside her. The stale but comfortable animal smell of him filled her nostrils. The room was clotted with darkness. She eased herself off the cot and wound her long cotton scarf round her shoulders and head.

  Outside, she poured herself water from the jug, drank a little, then wet the end of her scarf. The night air was fresh and earthy, after the breath-thick room. She crept round the side of the house, scanning the mud yard and the running blot of the low boundary wall. The goats stamped, moving nervously in a half-circle on their tethers. Beyond them, the field of standing corn stretched away in a solid dark block. She stood, hidden in the shadow of the house, and rubbed the damp tail of her scarf round her neck. Nothing.

  She looked out across the land. She knew every stone, every ditch of this field as well as she knew the bumps and contours of her son’s body, of her husband’s body too. It was good land. It rose like a blessing out of the barren desert, green fields made fertile by the sudden appearance of the river. The soil had fed as many generations of her husband’s family as anyone could remember. Like the people, it struggled to stave off exhaustion. She ran her eyes along the raised ridge, looking for fresh signs of collapse. When the rains were heavy, the top layer could lift and run away with the torrents of water. Their carefully dug irrigation channels silted up and, once the rain stopped, they squelched through them, feeling the mud ooze between their toes, to sieve the earth between their fingers and pile it back.