by Jeff Gulvin
Moore was drinking beer in the bar. He was a red-haired Australian, with a sun-burned neck where his hair was cut too short. The Cub’s hair was Native American black and very long, and it was stretched back from his forehead with a single elastic tie. He walked through the lobby and set his bags down next to Moore’s. The Australian looked up at him. ‘That was quick, mate.’
‘I got a cab right away.’ The Cub’s accent was well-practised Kiwi, differing from the Australian in words like ‘fish’ or ‘Jim’.
‘I’m sorry it took so long for them to get in touch,’ Moore said, and snapped his fingers at the barman, indicating a bottle of beer for each of them. ‘I’ve been up to my neck in panic over this thing. I really didn’t think it would be a goer after the Americans bombed the fuck out of him. A yank tried to see him, a bloke I know in New York, but the main man would have none of it. I reckon anyone with an American accent is nothing more than a target to him now.’
The Cub sat down on the stool and sipped beer. ‘So what’s the plan?’
Moore chuckled then. ‘The plan, mate, is we sit here and wait. It could be two hours. It could be two days.’
‘Or it could be two weeks, or never.’ The Cub made a face. ‘Well, I reckon I’ll share your room, if it comes to it. I pay enough rent in this city as it is.’
They waited for two days, The Cub hating every minute of the Australian’s company. He did not cope with company well, and worked alone unless it was with his old captain from the Legion, who was freelance like himself these days. At five in the afternoon on the second day, a man walked into reception, and Moore, who was drinking tea in the lounge, looked up and saw him. The Cub, sitting reading the newspaper across from him, watched from the corner of one eye as Moore crossed the lobby, all smiles and handshake at the ready. The man was short and stocky, with a beard but no headgear. He smiled, shook hands and then Moore indicated The Cub. He laid down the newspaper and stood up. For a moment, the man looked doubtful, but then he smiled, and The Cub smiled back and crossed the floor to greet him.
‘Terry Morgan. Meet Anwar. Anwar’s our driver and guide. He’s going to take us to meet our host.’
The Cub shook Anwar’s hand firmly. ‘Mr Morgan. A pleasure.’ Anwar showed gold teeth this time as he cracked another smile. ‘I have seen your pictures in the sports pages. Very good. The one of Shoaib Akhtar bowling out Tendulkar pleased me very much.’
‘I’ll bet it bloody did. Tendulkar’s the best bat in the world right now. I wish we had him in our team.’
‘Ah, New Zealand is not so bad for such a small country. I like Martin Crowe very much.’
‘Crowe retired years ago, Anwar. We need new blood if we’re ever going to get a five-Test series.’ He looked at Moore and gestured with his thumb. ‘This bloke lives in New York. He knows more about baseball than cricket.’
‘I know Australia is the best Test-playing nation in the world,’ Moore said. ‘What more do I need?’
Anwar drove a battered Mercedes 230. This time it had been easier, according to Moore. He had been able to apply for the proper visas, having planned the trip for some time. The Cub, unbeknown to him, could have any visa he wanted, stamped in whatever passport. He sat in the back being jolted around on spongy suspension, as Moore rode up front with Anwar. Anwar was not, apparently, directly involved with Bin Laden, not one of ‘his’ men. But he was close and worked as a go-between with various western and subcontinental agencies.
Moore had intimated that if the route followed the same as last time, they would fly to Peshawar and drive from there. But Anwar drove them beyond the airport, and when Moore asked him directly, he just smiled and told him that the plans were likely to alter at any minute. He had a cellphone with him, which he patted from time to time. The Cub sat in the back with his arms folded and stared at the dust rising from the fields beside the road.
They drove all the way to Peshawar, being lurched and bounced over a half-ruined, half-metalled road, and were on the city limits before the cellphone rang. Anwar pulled over and answered it, listening with the engine off and one finger plugging his other ear. He muttered, nodded and finally switched the phone off, and looked a little troubled.
‘What is it?’ Moore’s voice was edged with weariness and tension.
Anwar made a face. ‘We are to continue to Peshawar and wait.’
‘Where? A hotel?’
He shook his head. ‘A safe house.’ He started the engine and slipped the shift into drive and pulled back on to the highway. He looked in the rearview mirror and his eyes met those of The Cub.
The house turned out to be a hovel, a shack with one room; no sanitation or ventilation save the door. It was set in a choked area of the town, which was as shabby and rundown as the last time The Cub had been here, when the FBI were hunting Yousef Ramzi. Fires seemed to burn perpetually in Peshawar and for no apparent reason—tyres, piles of rubbish, vehicles, anything vaguely combustible. During the Afghan war, this had been the staging-post: the supply line for communications and weapons, with CIA and KGB agents bumping into each other on every street corner. You could still obtain a gun here more easily than a regular supply of rice. Abu Nidal had one of his many munitions centres here, from where he supplied any group prepared to pay his price. Unlike Ayman a-Zawahiri and his Islamic Jihad, the ANO had not thrown in with Bin Laden.
The Cub squatted on the dirt floor in the middle of the room and looked out of hooded eyes at Moore. ‘You’re nervous, aren’t you?’
‘Course I bloody am. This thing could go to ratshit at any moment.’
‘Then chill out. There’s nothing you can do about it, is there.’
Moore slumped to a sitting position on the floor. ‘It’s all right for you to talk, mate. It’s not your story.’
‘No, but it’s my pictures.’ The Cub sat cross-legged now and produced the short clay pipe he liked to smoke and filled it with rough-cut tobacco.
‘You look like a bloody Indian,’ Moore said. ‘You got Maori in you?’
The Cub shook his head. ‘Samoan and Filipino.’
Anwar came in then with some tea, meat and black bread. He brought sleeping mats from the car; and when The Cub looked out he saw a young kid of about fourteen, sitting the watch with a 9mm on his lap. He chewed at the dry bread and sipped hot tea, and smelled the dust and smoke in the atmosphere. The kid looked round at him and two pairs of cold eyes met through the twilight. Neither of them smiled.
They waited in the heat and dust of Peshawar for two more days, The Cub spending his time sleeping or moving between the hovels and junkyards, looking at places he recognised. Moore was becoming agitated again and The Cub could not stand the man’s nerves for more than an hour at a time. Anwar came and went, disappearing for long periods, but whenever he left the Mercedes, the same kid with the black eyes and the 9mm stood guard over it. On the evening of the third day, Anwar returned looking troubled, but ushered them and their belongings into the car. He started the engine and the heat intensified, sweat dribbling in slow drops down his forehead. He rested one arm on the back of Moore’s seat and spoke to both of them. ‘You are to fly from here to a small airfield north-west of the Khyber Pass. From there, you will be met at the Afghan border by members of the Taliban. They will want to ensure your papers are in order, so be ready.’
The plane was a twin-engined eight-seater, and they were the only passengers. The pilot and co-pilot sat up front, and they were ushered on board by two bearded men, wearing traditional Muslim clothing and dusty white turbans wrapped round their heads. Nobody spoke. The two men checked their bags meticulously. They searched the aluminium camera case completely, taking out each piece of equipment and replacing it. They tried to remove the sponge that was sectioned so each piece fitted snugly, and The Cub explained to them that it did not come out. They appeared to understand a little English, but when they spoke to one another it was in a dialect he had no comprehension of. He took his seat and strapped himself in.
‘Wonder what the in-flight movie is today,’ he muttered and raised a smile from Moore.
The plane took off, immediately banking sharply, and then climbed north above the mountains. The land beneath them was rugged and barren, all but inaccessible by road. Moore was staring out of the window.
‘I take it this isn’t the way you came the last time,’ The Cub said quietly.
Moore shook his head. ‘No, we went to Bannu and then overland from there. I haven’t got a clue where we’re headed this time.’
‘But he trusts you.’
Moore snapped a glance at him. ‘D’you think we’d have got this far if he didn’t?’
The Cub settled back and closed his eyes. The two men, who were travelling with them, sat in seats which faced them and watched. Moore tried to talk to them, practising his rudimentary grasp of their dialect, but either they did not understand or they ignored him. In the end, he fell silent.
They landed in darkness and, as soon as the engines died, The Cub heard the protracted rattle of automatic gunfire. The door opened and a set of steps were wheeled up, and he went to pick up his bags. But they were already held by one of their escorts. The Cub looked at the man holding his. ‘You be careful of my camera, now.’
The man stared at him and said nothing. The Cub touched an index finger to his temple and considered how he would kill him if he had to, then descended the steps.
They were in a narrow mountain pass, which was more of a flat stretch of road than an airstrip, and the wind whipped the dust into a storm of little devils. The Cub waited at the bottom of the steps for Moore and quickly took in his surroundings. Two vehicles stood beside a shadowy, hangar-like shed fifty yards to his right. He could see a windsock billowing on top of a wooden pole, where the lighter mass of the sky pierced the gap in the mountains. The gunfire was coming from the vehicles and he made out three figures shooting automatic weapons into the air. The vehicles were US army trucks that must have been left over from the war. The engine started on one and the headlights hit him full beam in the face. He stood where he was, blinking hard, and waited.
Next to him, Moore was restless. ‘Taliban,’ he said. ‘Get your papers ready.’
The truck pulled up in front of them and two men got out of the passenger side. Both had AK47s on chest slings and they rattled a few words of Afghan at The Cub and gestured with open palms. He handed them his papers, which he carried in the linen pocket stitched inside the knee-length shirt. They shone a torch at the documents and then into his face, and the younger of the two—dark-eyed and with a black beard—stared him right in the eyes. The Cub smiled at him, and the man shouted something, waved the passport and then tucked it away inside his pocket. Moore lost his passport too, and he explained that the men were Taliban, but they were Bin Laden’s and they would return the papers when they took the journalists back to Pakistan.
‘So this is Afghanistan, then,’ The Cub said.
Moore nodded. ‘You know, you’re dealing with this much better than I thought you would.’
The Cub laughed as they were ushered round the back of the truck at gunpoint.
‘Listen, mate. You learn a bit of philosophy when you watch New Zealand play cricket.’
They sat in the back of the truck—which was covered in military green canvas and had bench seats along either side—wedged between Taliban fighters with Kalashnikovs and ammunition belts doubled across their shoulders like Pancho Villa. The Cub tried to talk to the young lad next to him, who was no more than eleven if he was a day, but the kid just glowered at him and plucked at the ammo belt that all but crushed his chest. Their bags were nowhere in sight, but the other truck followed, and The Cub could only hope they were in that one. He had a tiny global positioning system built into one of his cameras and right now it was signalling the NSA’s listening post in Egypt. The chances of hitting Bin Laden on this trip were slim if he wanted to get out alive, but he had his equipment should an opportunity present itself. The GPS would enable the boys in Egypt to get a handle on his movements. They wanted to pinpoint Bin Laden’s new location, which might, or might not be, where they were headed now. If The Cub could house him, then he would plan the hit from there.
The trucks wound a path between the mountains and then climbed once again. The Cub had a mini-compass in the bowl of his pipe and he knew they had flown north-east initially, before looping away west. Now they were driving due west, deeper into Afghanistan. They drove for four hours into the night before they heard gunfire and the sky was lit up by tracer bullets.
‘Welcoming party,’ Moore said. ‘Either that or a warning. Sometimes, the communication between his various factions isn’t as professional as it’s cracked up to be. They show both their displeasure and pleasure by shooting off their guns.’ He made a face then. ‘When I met him last time, they fired off their weapons like applause. He’s got bodyguards, but if a round hit him they would never identify the shooter.’
The gunfire grew steadily louder until it seemed as though it was right outside the truck, and then the vehicle stopped and flashlights were shone in their faces from the tailgate. The Cub shaded his eyes and counted a dozen different heads bobbing behind the lights. The tailgate was unfastened and they were manhandled to the ground, where the lights were shone in their eyes and, for the second time, their identities were checked against their papers. Still, the documents were not returned to them, and they were moved from the first truck to another, with fresh guards and fresh arguments.
The Cub watched with interest: each group of men they encountered was different and seemingly disorganised. Gunfire was a consistent feature; the rattle of assault rifles being let off with abandon. He studied the group, who now escorted them along the pitted roads leading ever deeper into the mountains, and put most of them under twenty. They were volatile, undisciplined, and probably unreliable. These were the ultimate boys with the ultimate toys, which they relished playing with. He was absolutely positive now, given the opportunity, he could execute this mission with relative ease. Moore had fallen into a weary silence and his head lolled on his chest as they were bounced and battered from one hole in the road to the next. The Cub sat with his arms folded and rested his eyes while remaining fully awake and listening to the drifting conversation, sometimes quiet, sometimes animated, from the men around him.
‘You are from New Zealand?’ He opened his eyes and looked into the face of the man seated directly opposite him. He was young and his beard was straggly, his features dark and smooth and as yet unmarked by age or life in the mountains. He was leaning forward, AK flattened across his knees, with a single belt of ammunition hanging from one shoulder. The Cub nodded.
‘What part?’ The man’s English was perfect.
‘South Island.’
‘Whereabouts?’
The Cub sat up straighter now.
‘Invercargill.’
‘The very south, then.’
The Cub nodded. ‘Have you been there?’
The man shook his head. ‘I was educated in England. Harrow.’
The Cub squinted at him. He knew that Harrow was a public school. ‘What’re you doing, here?’
The young man smiled then and glanced at his colleagues who looked on blankly.
‘Fighting for Islam.’
‘You believe it all, do you?’
‘Most certainly. We read only the earliest versions of the Koran. Our religion must be pure, uncorrupted—the religion of the prophet. We leave nothing to chance.’
‘I’ll bet.’
The man sat more upright again. ‘How long have you been a journalist?’
‘I’m a photographer.’
‘How long?’
‘Years.’
‘I’ve never seen your pictures.’
‘You like cricket?’
The man laughed then.
‘It’s true. I take pictures of cricketers. It’s why I base myself in Islamabad. There’s always some side playing down here. Most of the other guys
trail after Australia or the West Indies, but the market for Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan stuff is brilliant. Then, of course, you’ve got Bangladesh, and I can get to South Africa and Zimbabwe if I want.’
The boy thinned his eyes then. ‘So why are you here?’
‘Because somebody asked me to come.’ The Cub shrugged his shoulders. ‘I live in Islamabad. I’m a Kiwi and he wanted somebody he could trust.’ He jabbed a thumb at Moore. ‘Apparently, your boss isn’t keen on Americans.’
‘None of us are keen on Americans. Or the British either. They are just puppets of the Americans.’
‘But you went to school in England.’
The boy made a face. ‘My father paid for me.’
The Cub nodded again and sighed. ‘You know, I’m beginning to wish I’d stuck to cricket matches. How much further is it?’
The boy laughed then. ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘But I get the feeling you care about very little.’
The Cub looked evenly back at him. ‘I care about cricket,’ he said. ‘Cricket and good pictures. Which reminds me. I’m going to need my cameras.’
The boy sat back. ‘You will get them. Don’t worry.’
The Cub waited for maybe five more minutes of lurching and bouncing, before he sat forward and beckoned. The boy leaned towards him. ‘I thought your boss had gone walkabout.’
‘He did. After the Americans attacked us, he removed himself for a while.’
‘So where are we going, then?’
‘You’ll see.’
Dawn had broken before the trucks slowed and took what turned out to be a final bend in the mountain road. Moore was awake, very stiff and sore, and The Cub gazed past him to the roadside, which was chipped and broken by stones. It fell away sharply and the whole world seemed to be one rugged line of mountains. He could tell by the ease of his breathing that they were not very high, and he figured they were somewhere east of Kabul, yet still west of the Khyber Pass. The road narrowed where the cliffs dropped away on one side, and then all at once the mountain reared on both sides and they were in a narrow, natural tunnel. The Cub moved to the back of the truck and looked up, where the curve of the walls formed a natural roof. He could not see the sky. The sound of a Kalashnikov being racked made him look round and he stared into the face of the young boy. The boy motioned with the weapon for him to resume his seat, which he did.
