by Andy McNab
I could see the crossroads maybe fifty ahead. Turning left would take me to a main drag. Then if I turned left again I'd get to the junction near the Gandamack.
But that wasn't going to happen. There were too many cowpats with pissed-off faces gathering at the junction. Young men smoking, staring, waiting. I didn't know if it was the prospect of money, wanting to know what the fuck I was doing there, or just because I was white. I wasn't going to hang around long enough to find out.
I crossed the road as casually as I could, heading towards the nearest alleyway. As soon as I was out of sight, I broke into a run. I took the first left, then a right down a rubbish-filled gap between two buildings. I wanted to put as many angles between them and me as I could. I jumped a low wall and landed in a small square. I was losing my bearings as I ran into another street, but at least it was quiet, just closed doors and growling dogs.
Shouts bounced off the houses behind me.
I charged down another alleyway, not looking back, just trying to make distance. The shouts seemed to follow me. My sun-gigs bounced even higher as I took a right between two mud buildings. I spotted a mountain of firewood and burrowed in behind it.
My throat rasped as I lay there gulping air.
Woodsmoke and the sound of Bollywood wafted from the house above me.
I fought to control my breathing as I heard more shouts and the slap of sandals and boots on what was left of the tarmac.
I moved my head very slowly and peered round my cover. Three or four were running, searching, sounding more and more pissed off at not gripping me.
It was getting close to last light. I would have to sit it out and wait. This wasn't the time to get out my map and play tourist.
52
I wondered if it was the Indian guy with the beard who'd been singing and dancing on their television for the last thirty minutes.
It was fully dark, and the crowd had dispersed. I pulled the mobile carefully from my jeans and powered it up, shielding the glow of the display with my hand.
'Magreb, mate. It's Nick. The Gandamack – do you know where the Gandamack Lodge is? The hotel?'
Pots and pans clanged in the background as the Serena's answer to Gordon Ramsay yelled orders at his sidekicks.
'Yes, yes. You want me drive you there, maybe?'
'No, I want you to meet me there after work. But right now I need you to tell me how to get there on foot.'
His voice took on a strangulated tone. 'Not walk, Mr Nick. Very bad men there. Wait until I finish work, maybe-'
'Too late, mate. Listen, if I describe where I am could you get me on the right road? I know I'm not that far away from it.'
He didn't sound too happy. I wasn't sure if he was concerned for my safety or for lost income if I got lifted.
I extricated myself from the woodpile. 'I'm looking at a big road just ahead. By the junction I see a sports shop – Gym Tonic. The windows are full of running machines, mate. You understand, multigyms? Punch bags?'
It seemed so out of place. I'd have thought the last thing the locals would be worried about was toning up for the beach.
'OK, OK.' He was thinking. 'Mr Nick, walk past sport shop and go right, then-'
'I'll stop you there, mate. I need to keep on the side-roads. The bad men have already found me. I'm hiding from them. I don't want to be under those shops' lights, do I?'
It took a few seconds to sink in. Either that or he couldn't hear me above the din of Gordon's latest wobbler.
'OK. You walk away from sport shop, maybe, the other way, and tell me what you see.'
I did what he said. I walked for the next ten minutes without hitting a landmark. At last I found a handpainted street name and spelt it out for him.
We worked our way down streets where occasional slivers of light forced their way between shuttered windows. Traffic groaned incessantly on parallel roads. I imagined the pavements full of angry young men in cowpats.
'What can you see now, Mr Nick?'
I stood between two trucks. 'There's a crossroads. On the far side there's a high wall with razor wire, maybe an embassy. I might be at the start of the diplomatic area.'
'Yes, Mr Nick. What is in the middle of road? Concrete, maybe?'
The road had a central reservation of scabby bushes. 'Bushes, mate. Not concrete. To the right I can see the lights on TV Hill.'
'Go left, Mr Nick. Left and you will come to the Gandamack.'
I jumped the junction and headed left, hugging the wall. Headlights caught me in their glare but there was fuck-all I could do about it.
'Go up the road, Mr Nick. Walk more. You see computer shop, maybe?'
'Yes.'
The little fucker was spot-on.
'The Gandamack is on this road, on same side as computer shop.'
There were shouts from behind me. I spun round to see cowpats, maybe five or six of the fuckers, running my way.
'I'll call you later.'
I closed down as I legged it, and within a few strides I could make out the shapes of guard huts sticking out from the line of buildings.
The cowpats were gaining on me but I was getting closer to the huts.
Bodies spilled out to investigate the commotion. They couldn't have been sure what the fuck was coming at them out of the dark.
A couple had their weapons up. Another two were already checking their safety catches.
I held up my hands as I ran. 'It's OK, it's OK! Gandamack!
My hands stayed up. I got to within about fifteen metres of them. 'The Gandamack! Where's the Gandamack?'
One pointed down a dark gap that loomed on my left. I couldn't tell if the building behind had been bombed or was being repaired, but these guys had to be guarding something.
Their weapons lowered. I checked behind. The cowpats weren't that brave.
My hands dropped to my knees as I fought for breath. 'No need to shoot me. I won't complain about the food, honest.' I held out my hand and they shook.
I picked my way over rubble and bricks. Plastic buckets full of the stuff sat waiting to be moved.
There was a pedestrian door to the right of the gates. Set into it was a sliding peephole.
I gave the gate a couple of punches. The steel rattled. The slide was pulled back and a set of dark brown Afghan eyes wanted to know what the fuck I wanted.
53
I gave him a big smile as the door swung open and I got a big row of brown teeth back. He was dressed for winter warfare in a thick black polo-neck jumper beneath an even thicker stripy tank top. Me, I was wiping sweat off my face. On the floor of his plywood gatehouse were a bedroll, bottled-gas burner, kettle, teapot and glasses. He was set for the night.
A dozen or so dusty 4x4s were jammed against each other in the courtyard. The house was large, with additions all over the place. I followed the gravel path across a patch of garden to a set of concrete steps that led up to the glass-fronted entrance.
The first thing I saw in the hallway as I stepped inside was a long rack of old Martini-Henry rifles, probably relics from the last time we tried to control the area and got fucked off big-time. The Khyber Pass to Pakistan wasn't that far away.
The reception desk wasn't manned. A card told me the name Gandamack had come from the fictional home of Harry Flashman, the nineteenth-century answer to James Bond. It was also the name of the village that had seen the slaughter of about sixteen thousand British troops by the Afghans in 1842. I wondered if some of the gear in the racks had seen action there.
I wandered into the eating area. The tables were laid for dinner later tonight, with starched white cloths and china. All the breakfast stuff – jars of marmalade, jam, honey and Marmite – were stacked ready on a side-table, just like in a B and B. The walls were decorated with hunting and fishing prints. Stuffed parrots flew around in a glass-fronted cabinet. The only thing to remind you that you weren't in an old Surrey inn was the neatly stencilled sign on the door: Only side-arms allowed in the restaurant.
I looked through the open windows and on to the grass. Two big, muscular guys had squeezed into a couple of wicker chairs under the external lighting. They sat with their tree-trunk legs splayed apart. With their dark skin and black leather jackets they could only have been from the Balkans. My money was on them being Serbs.
They had been taking afternoon tea. A wicker table was set with china. Ducks waddled round their legs scavenging scraps of sandwiches.
Neither looked the afternoon-tea type. One's head was shaved bald, and reflected the light like he'd been having a go with the Mr Sheen. The other had greasy brown hair down to his shoulders and a top lip like John Major's. He was talking into a mobile.
I moved closer to the window. He wanted to know why they hadn't got the equipment they'd asked for. If it didn't come soon, someone was going to pay. That would have had the person at the other end sitting up and taking notice. To a Serb, payment didn't necessarily mean cash.
A young lad in a white shirt appeared behind me. He was all smiles.
'Hello, mate – where's the pub?'
'The Hare and Hound? Downstairs, sir. I'll show you.'
He led me out of the restaurant, past the weapon racks and back outside towards a flight of steps down to the basement.
'Is my mate staying here? Tall Polish guy, irritatingly good-looking? His name's Dom, Dominik Condratowicz. Might have left a couple of days ago, I'm not sure.'
He thought for a while. It couldn't be that hard. The card had said there were only fifteen rooms. 'I do not think so, sir.'
'Could you find out, mate? Maybe at the desk?'
He nodded and gave a smile as five dollars found their way into his hand.
I carried on down a couple of stone steps to a large wooden door. I took off my Bergen as I went through. It was like walking into an olde-worlde pub, right down to the low-beamed ceiling. The only giveaway that we were still in Kabul was the two hundred years of rifle and machine-gun history stuck on the wall.
It wasn't busy. There were a couple of guys at one of the tables in a corner, and a couple of women at another. An overly Western-dressed local nursed a Coke at the bar. Bob Marley was on the speakers. Was it the anniversary of his death or something?
The young barman wore jeans, a tight T-shirt and had long, centre-parted hair. I asked for a Coke. All the drink was in bottles or cans. Lowenbrau was the only stuff on tap.
I took my cold can and glass and headed past the dartboard to one of the vacant tables.
The two huddled in the corner were big lads, maybe in their late twenties. They'd obviously been hitting the weights before slapping on the hair gel and heading out for the night. They hadn't been working on their lower bodies, though. They'd just been hitting the chest and arms so they looked good in their spray-on T-shirts.
Sundance and Trainers wouldn't have approved.
54
They had holsters and mag-carriers on their belts but nothing inside them. Maybe it was different rules downstairs: not even side-arms allowed in case things got out of hand after a few Lowenbraus.
They cracked into their cans of Guinness and cast an eye over the other table. The girls sounded as though they were from London. Both were wearing red and white Arab shemags, slung fashionably round their shoulders. Not only wrong country but wrong ethnic group. They checked their Thuriya sat phones for messages. I doubted they'd have many: Thuriyas are the dog's bollocks of the mobile world, but even they aren't too clever in basements.
It was the local guy at the bar I was interested in. Maybe mid-thirties and clean-shaven, he was trying too hard to do the Western thing. His shirt had the little polo-player motif; his jeans had a sharp crease down the middle. His navy ball cap had KBR embossed across the front. Kellogg, Brown and Root were a military contractor and Halliburton subsidiary. He wanted everyone to know he was in with the in-crowd. He just had to be a fixer.
He finished his Coke and started to say his goodbyes to the barman. I powered up the mobile, left some cash from my sock on the table, and followed, dragging my Bergen by one of its straps.
He'd got to the top of the stairs.
'Hello, mate – I was told you're the fixer. You working for anyone this week?'
He adjusted his baseball cap so it covered his eyes. 'I have work, but maybe if you need someone I could…'
His English was good.
I held up a hand as I climbed the stairs. 'It's you I need. I want you to track a mobile phone for me. It's in the city somewhere.'
'I'm sorry, I wouldn't know how to do that.' He headed on up, but I held his arm. 'Look, mate. You're a fixer. The only reason you can do the job is you know the Taliban – you might even have been one. Otherwise you'd get fuck-all fixed, wouldn't you?'
'I have to go-'
I held up the cash so it was level with his eyes and close enough to smell. 'I got two hundred for you now and two hundred more when you tell me where the number is. Get one of your Tali mates to do the same for me as they do for the guys in the mountains.'
He didn't think too much about it before the wad disappeared into his jeans.
'Do you want the name?'
'No. I know his fucking name. He owes me money and I want it back. How long will it take?'
I kept a grip on the fixer's arm to make sure he came with me. I guided him up the gravel and towards the glass entrance.
'Maybe half an hour.'
As we started up the steps the guy with the brown teeth swung the gates open and a wagon rolled into the compound.
Next to the Martini-Henrys was a table with newspapers, postcards and pens. I copied Basma's number from the mobile on to a hotel business card.
'Talk to your mates. If they get a location, you'll get another two hundred.'
He took the card and disappeared into the dining area. His mobile was already to his ear.
I went to the desk at the other end of the hallway. My white-shirted mate was there, studying the computer. 'I'm sorry, sir. No Polish man. He hasn't been here for over one year.'
He got another ten dollars. 'Thanks anyway.'
A side-door took me out into the garden. The two big Serbs were still sitting and enjoying their cigarettes. Small bats darted about over a tiled veranda overhanging a set of rooms along the side of the lodge. The ducks rooted in the long shadows cast by the lights.
Serbs are to war as Jocks are to kilts and whisky. They'd finished their own in the 1990s, but had had a finger in everyone else's ever since. They weren't the type to lay down their arms and take up bookkeeping positions in a Belgrade bank.
As I walked across the grass towards them I gave a nod and a smile. 'Evening.'
They stared, waiting to find out what the fuck I wanted while they sucked away at their cigarettes and admired the red glows in front of their faces. They were ready for a night out by the smell of them. It was heavy cologne all the way.
'I need a weapon. I'm heading south. Do you know where I can get one, and quick? I'll pay.'
Top Lip couldn't have been less interested. Mr Sheen looked me up and down as if I shouldn't even be near them, let alone talking. 'Cowboy or newsman?'
'Cowboy.'
I hated that shit. They'd been watching far too many films. They waffled between themselves. It wasn't intense; it wasn't as if there was a law against having guns here. Top Lip was just telling Mr Sheen to fuck me off. But there seemed to be a good enough reason for helping me. Top Lip finally shrugged and Mr Sheen pulled out a pen. He beckoned for my hand. He gripped it with his rough and massive one and wrote straight on to the skin. If he'd pressed any harder it would have turned into a tattoo. 'Don't go until early hours. No one will let you in. Tell him I sent you.'
'What's your name?'
He blanked me. 'Just tell him. If you can't find it, you shouldn't be allowed to ride.'
I nodded my thanks and left. I could see the fixer in the dining area as I headed for the bar. He'd just finished his call.
55
Back in the pub a waiter wal
ked past me with two heaped plates of steak, chips and peas, and a bottle of ketchup. An early dinner for the big lads, who were now flexing away at the girls' table.
More drinkers had arrived. All three of the thirty-something males propping up the bar looked like they'd gone native. Their faces had maybe three months' growth, and they wore all the local gear – baggy trousers, waistcoats, cowpats and shirts down to their knees. They weren't taking the whole thing to extremes, though: one was in the process of ordering them Guinnesses and shots of Famous Grouse. Until I heard them shooting the shit, I couldn't make up my mind whether they were serious players or members of a ZZ Top tribute band.
Cigarettes came out as they perched on stools and waffled on about being down south, and how they were coming up against the Taliban and getting some awesome film. Everything was fucking awesome, man – and I mean awesome.
They lifted their shot glasses and toasted each other, then tilted back their heads and wiped their beards with the back of a hand in true Afghan fashion. With their suntanned faces, they certainly looked the part. They would have passed as Taliban at a glance, and that was probably all they needed.
I wandered over. 'How long you guys been back from Helmand?'
'Five days, man.'
The one who'd ordered the drinks had the longest and bushiest beard of the three. Cigarette ash distributed itself generously across it as he bounced a Marlboro up and down on his lips. 'We go back in another two.'
'You seen a Polish journo about? Dominik Condratowicz?'
'Shit, man, I know who he is – he's like a fucking superhero. He here now?'
'You seen him?'
'No, but you know what? Two fucking guys came here last week, maybe Saturday, who knows? Anyways, they were high, man, up on H, and they were shouting for him. Pushing every fucker around saying they know he's in the city, wanting to kill the guy or something fucked-up like that.'
