The Agent Runner

by Simon Conway

  Without answering, bomb-boy knelt beside him and crossed his legs, drawing his ragged coat around him. He looked up at Noman, expectantly.

  ‘You’ve been looking for me,’ the mullah said.

  ‘Actually, I am looking for Abu Dukhan,’ Noman corrected him.

  The mullah nodded as if it was the answer he was expecting. ‘He is looking forward to meeting you.’

  ‘He is?’

  ‘Sit down.’

  Noman sat. The mullah leant forward and offered Noman the pipe. Accepting it, Noman raised the stem to his mouth and pulled smoke into his lungs. He exhaled and returned the pipe.

  ‘Tomorrow I will take you into the mountains,’ the mullah said. ‘The next day or the day after that we will meet with Abu Dukhan. God willing, he will let you live for long enough to hear his story. If he is happy I think he will help you.’

  ‘How will he help me?’

  The mullah smiled, his eyes as flat as a snake’s. ‘You want to know the truth about Khan don’t you?’

  28. The father of smoke

  Fighters of the House of War came down through the narrow wooded ravine with their guns on their shoulders, moving silently like wraiths in the early morning mist. The mullah stood up from the embers of the campfire and waited for their arrival. Taking his cue from him, Noman climbed self-consciously to his feet. As well as the filthy dressing gown, he was now wearing rubber sandals and a pair of blue jogging pants with holes at the knees. It was cold and he was shivering. He rubbed his arms and tried to tell himself it was all going to be ok. It didn’t help that the mullah was clearly nervous. Only bomb-boy was unaffected, he was squatting some way off scratching at the dirt with a stick like a hen pecking in a farmyard.

  The fighters stopped short of them, forming an attentive perimeter. They were pointing their guns now, sawn-off shotguns and Kalashnikovs with the bluing rubbed off, as if they spent a lot of time poking things with the muzzles. They were in a terrible state, with starved lupine faces and several of them had what looked suspiciously like radiation burns and hair coming out in clumps. They were wearing a motley collection of rags, blankets and animal pelts festooned with leather bandoliers of ammunition. It occurred to Noman that he was probably going to be shot and dumped here at the bottom of the ravine for the jackals and the buzzards to fight over. He’d seen large animal prints down by the river when he went to wash his face at dawn and he’d sensed something watching him from the undergrowth. He’d never been so far into the tribal areas, so far beyond the writ of the Pakistani army, let alone the state, and it was terrifying to think of what kind of beasts must carve out a living here alongside these remnants of humans.

  By rights he should have something snappy to say, a final exclamation, but he couldn’t think of anything. He really didn’t want to die.

  The tallest and most cadaverous of the fighters stepped up to Noman. He had a grey-streaked beard to his waist and his eyes were sunk in cups of grime as if he were an animal looking out through the eyeholes of a skull. He wore a rolled wool pakol hat and there was a filthy homespun pattu blanket wrapped around his scrawny shoulders. He searched Noman thoroughly, rummaging in his pockets and running his fingers along the seams of his clothes, and then he did the same to the mullah. He made him remove his artificial leg and, holding it by the foot, shook it as if expecting something to fall out. Satisfied he flung it into the bushes. He nodded to the boy but made no effort to search him.

  Noman was appalled, what was wrong with these people? He wanted to shout: You dolt! Search him! He’s a bomb!

  The man nodded to one of his comrades who walked some way off and spoke quietly into a handheld VHF radio. After a short wait, there was further movement in the ravine. Some kind of large and swaying contraption was coming down through the trees towards them. It took Noman a few moments to realise what it was: four men holding a palanquin, the carrying poles resting on their shoulders and a covered litter suspended beneath. They moved slowly, treading carefully amongst the rocky outcrops, the litter’s ragged curtains dragging along the ground like unravelling bandages. When they reached the campfire they stopped and put down the litter.

  The boy was the first to move. He scurried over and knelt beside the curtain with his head bowed like a supplicant. Noman saw that he was whispering to someone inside. He realised then that the boy and his bomb did not belong to the mullah, but rather they belonged to whoever occupied the litter. The curtain parted briefly and a scarred and scabrous hand reached out and pressed a livid thumb to the boy’s forehead. The boy backed up a little and then turned and motioned for Noman to approach.

  The first thing he noticed was the awful smell: the sweet gagging stink of necrotic flesh. It gave him a fleeting sense of some long forgotten, long suppressed experience. Was this what it smelled like, crawling across the dirt floor of his parents shack with his mother’s corpse blocking the doorway? He swallowed, fighting a wave of nausea, and pulled the lapel of his dressing gown over his nose as he knelt down alongside the litter.

  The boy drew aside the layers of ragged curtain and Noman looked upon the charred body of Abu Dukhan, the father of smoke, in a heap on the canvas bed, like an insect, crushed and lying in its own juices. Here and there fragments of shrapnel glimmered like fragments of glass. Whatever dreadful thing had happened to him, it had clearly happened a while back and that he was still alive was clearly a testament to his force of will rather than any medical assistance subsequently rendered.

  When he spoke his voice was low and rasping and almost completely unintelligible. ‘He says that you have the evil eye,’ the boy translated for him. ‘He wants to know why you are looking for him?’

  ‘I came looking for you because I was told not to,’ Noman told the ruined man.

  ‘Who told you not to?’ the boy demanded.

  ‘Khan.’

  At the mention of the old man’s name, Abu Dukhan raised his hand, his thumb tipped awkwardly in the direction of mullah. Noman glanced back at the mullah who was pushing himself along the ground in the direction of his leg. Realising that he was being watched, the mullah stopped. He clasped his hands together as if pleading.

  ‘Khan betrayed us,’ the boy said.

  ‘He has betrayed us all,’ Noman replied.

  ‘He sent us his emissary, this weak and pathetic creature, this snake in the grass,’ the boy told him, pointing at the mullah. ‘The message that he brought from Khan was that, although we were discovered, we could continue to live in the cave under his protection and that we could continue to build our mighty weapon provided that when we came to strike a blow it was at a time and place of Khan’s choosing. He gave reassurance that, when the time was ripe, using the device would strike a mighty blow for God. He even offered us help in transporting the device to its target. We knew Khan’s reputation and the extent of his reach. We decided to believe him and place our trust in his emissary. When the mullah offered to officiate at the wedding of his son, Abu Dukhan gladly accepted. And that is when Khan chose to strike. The mullah sneaked away from the wedding party and sent a message to Khan, giving him our location and soon the drones came and the missiles rained down. Many died: men, women and children. The cave was buried and the device destroyed. Khan is a traitor.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Noman asked.

  The boy shrugged. ‘The snake has admitted it.’

  Noman wasn’t sure which was the most disappointing conclusion: that Khan was a lackey of the Americans or that there would be no dirty bomb.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

  The boy leant forward and listened. When he was done he looked up at Noman. ‘It is not enough to kill Khan. Abu Dukhan says we could have done that long ago. I could have done it.’ The boy tapped his chest. ‘I have been as close to Khan as you are to me. Abu Dukhan is very clear. Khan must be discredited. He must be exposed as a traitor and stripped of his rank and his wealth and his lands and his children must be disinherited and only then should he be put t
o death. Only then can Abu Dukhan die in peace. Do you understand?’

  ‘Sure.’ Abu Dukhan was completely fucking insane, Noman understood that much.

  ‘You are married to his daughter?’

  Noman swallowed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are his son?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You live in his house.’

  ‘I hate him as much as you do! That’s why I’m here. ‘

  The boy leaned in close to Abu Dukhan again and listened and nodded. Then he gestured for one of the fighters to come close and he whispered in his ear. The fighter stepped behind Noman.

  ‘We can work together on this,’ he pleaded. ‘I can help you!’

  Something was happening. Silence thickened in the ravine around him, a vacuum in which the tension grew towards the intolerable and, with it the cold realisation that his earlier fears had been correct, that he was about to die. Eyes sliding towards him, then sliding away. Noman felt the colour rising in his cheeks, a snake of sweat running down his temple.

  He heard the distinctive click-clack of a Kalashnikov being made ready. He swallowed. There was movement behind him. He closed his eyes. The crack of the bullet was ear splitting.

  Noman screamed.

  He crabbed around sideways, astonished to find that he was unhurt. Behind him the mullah was writhing in the dirt, leg and stump flapping, blood from the artery in his neck squirting twenty feet across the clearing. The tallest of the fighters stepped up to the mullah and shot him again, in the head this time. His dead jaw gaped.

  Noman glanced back at the boy.

  ‘I have passed from him to you,’ the boy said, as if he was making some kind of solemn commitment: a bamiyat – an oath of fealty. But Noman understood that in effect he was the one that had made the oath. He had committed either to bring about Khan’s downfall or to die together with the boy in a shrapnel tsunami.

  29. The Grapes

  They were sitting beside each other on a small wooden balcony above the Thames at the back of The Grapes pub in Limehouse and their fingertips were touching. The winter sun was low, a dull red orb without heat in a pale immensity. It was just past high tide and the current was beginning to ebb, a great roiling mass of brown water rushing beneath their feet and curving away past the crowded shimmer of Canary Wharf. As in Afghanistan, Ed was reminded of Conrad:

  What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! […] The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

  He had started out from here, like so many others had done before him, with the belief that he could make the world a safer place, not as a conqueror like those others, but rather as liberator, or so he had told himself. It had carried him to Iraq and Afghanistan, as far as a distant valley at the end of the world. He had been wrong to imagine that he could make any difference, foolish to imagine that the result would be any different to Conrad’s French destroyer hurling shells blindly into the jungle.

  He had thought when Tariq died that he would not go back, that period of his life was over. But now he was preparing to return. And this time he faced a much greater challenge.

  ‘Your mother’s asked me to go to Lahore to manage the office there,’ he said, breaking the silence.

  Sameenah had called him into her office that morning and made the offer that would trigger the next part of the plan.

  He could tell that Leyla wanted him to tell her that he would not go. When he didn’t she did that thing with her lips – when they went in two different directions at once.

  ‘Is it safe for you?’

  She’d noticed the change in him, of course. He had become withdrawn and uncommunicative. It sometimes felt like he was two people, the one here now, touching fingers in the balcony, falling ever further in love, and the other, ready to do Burns’ bidding for the sake of what exactly? Revenge? It was about more than just Tariq, he told himself, and more than just doing his job, and more than any sense of patriotism fed to him at Oxford or in the Navy. It was about trying to secure a better future for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Getting rid of Khan would be like felling a massive old tree in a forest. It would allow light to reach the forest floor and encourage new shoots to grow. Of course it was fraught with danger, of course you couldn’t entirely control what came after, but for the sake of the people of those countries it was worth taking the risk. Or was it? Was that what Conrad had meant when he talked about the “dreams of men”. Was he about to make the same foolish mistake again?

  ‘How long are you going to stay?’ she asked.

  He withdrew his hand. ‘I’m not sure.’

  Sometimes it was better not to think about it, to just get on with it. He had a sequence of actions that had been mapped out for him.

  ‘Will you come back?’

  ‘That’s up to your mother,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t have to do what she says,’ she said.

  ‘Of course I do,’ he said, cruelly. ‘I’m not like you. I need this job.’

  ‘Why are you being like this?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You’re so bloody angry. You’re the angriest man I know.’

  #

  They ran back down cobbled streets between converted warehouses. He caught her by the arm and pushed her into a darkened loading dock, his hands roving under her coat, reckless with lust. She was right, he was angry. At himself and at Burns who had made a liar of him. He couldn’t bear the thought that this might be their last night together. She broke way and he ran after her, her smile bright white in the gloaming, her mocking laughter echoing around the high walls. They crossed the Highway and Cable Street and under a railway arch he pulled her to him and they kissed hungrily. He pressed himself against the upward curve of her thigh. She pushed him off and ran. They had crossed the line back into Whitechapel.

  They reached the house just as his father was leaving. A moment’s awkwardness as they passed each other in the hallway followed by a helter-skelter rush to the bedroom, discarding clothing on the way. He made love to her with the urgency of a soldier on the eve of departure for battle.

  Afterwards, Leyla arched her back and stretched like a cat in the narrow confines of his bed. He told himself that he was not going to do this.

  Who was he kidding? The spy in him was already preparing for the dangerous journey towards Javid Aslam Khan.

  30. Non-compliant subject removal

  Ed flew out of Terminal 4 on a sunny June evening on the return leg of a Pakistan International Airways flight, the cabin’s stale air saturated with the sour smell of ghee. He was wedged between two large ill-tempered women and one row behind a hysterical infant. He didn’t sleep.

  After eight hours, the plane landed in Lahore and as soon as the roar of deceleration had ended, the aisles were full of pushing and shoving families, pulling down suitcases and bundles of gifts, as they taxied to the terminal. Ed was dragged along in a rush to the covered walkway at the front of the plane. He passed through immigration without incident. Standing by the carousel, waiting for his bag, he could hear the hubbub of an over-excited crowd.

  There was an eager young man with stiff toothbrush hair waiting for him in the arrivals hall. He was carrying a cardboard sign with the name Edward Henry Malik hand-written on it. He introduced himself as Faisal and assured him that his uncle, general manager of J&K Cargo and Travel Lahore branch, was waiting with much anticipation to greet him at the office. After a brief tour of the premises, Faisal would escort him to his residence and give him the opportunity to rest before assuming his new responsibilities bright and early the next morning. He took Ed’s bag by the handle and wielded it like a riot shield through the press of people while Ed followed.

  The terminal was a chapel of calm in comparison with the chaos of the morning rush hour: so many auto-rickshaws, cars, buses and mini-buses, all jostling for position in a moraine tide of eddies and blockages and moments of sudden acceleration.

  ‘How is my A
untie Sameenah?’ Faisal asked. ‘It’s ages since she has been to visit us. How is my very beautiful cousin Leyla?’

  #

  ‘They know you’re coming,’ Jonah had told him, just before they parted. ‘We’ve made sure of that. They’ll come to you. My guess is they’ll do it quickly. Noman will want to have hold of you before Khan finds out.’

  He didn’t even make it to the office. They dragged him out of the car while it was boxed in at a roundabout. The first indication of what was happening was when he caught a fleeting glimpse of someone dodging between cars in the offside wing-mirror. Then the unmistakable pop and hiss of smoke grenades. He turned in his seat in time to see several black canisters with contrails of yellow smoke, arcing over the top of the traffic and tumbling down around the car. Within moments the view was obscured by shifting smoke.

  Faisal was trembling, looking left and right. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Stay calm,’ Ed told him, gently but firmly. ‘Keep your hands on the wheel.’

  ‘Just let it happen,’ Jonah had advised him. ‘Don’t try and resist.’

  Four masked men carrying batons stepped out of the smoke and surrounded the car. They were wearing sandbags over their heads, with ragged eyeholes cut it them that gave them a nightmarish aspect. They were shouting in Pashtu. They methodically smashed the windows and stove in the bonnet, and while one of them held a gun to Faisal’s head another, a mountain of a man, opened Ed’s door and pulled him out onto the tarmac. His arms were pulled behind his back and his wrists bound with Plasticuffs.

  He was lifted onto his feet and guided out through the smoke, across the chaos of the roundabout and into a side street where a black Range Rover was parked. They bundled him in and jumped in after. He was wedged between two of his kidnappers, bent over to release the pressure on his arms, with his head on his knees. When they pulled off the sandbags he struggled to contain his alarm. They looked sick, maybe even terminally so, with red-eyes, sores on their cheeks and bald patches in their beards. The only one who didn’t look like he was on the brink of death was the largest. A bushy bearded Pashtun who drove the car.