The Network - Jason Elliot [139]
‘We don’t want him doing much sightseeing,’ he says as he tightens the knot. ‘He can come in the G with us. That way he doesn’t get to overhear anything except my bad English.’
We have a certain sympathy for our extra passenger, at whose expense we’re unable to resist a few jokes.
‘Do you think he’s got a mobile? Ask him to call his girlfriend so she can come and pick him up later,’ says H.
‘He says he hasn’t got a girlfriend. But he’s got a nice-looking donkey who he misses a lot.’ And so on, because for the time being we have the advantage.
A single range of mountains separates us from our objective. In a straight line we are a little more than fifteen miles from the fort, but there’s no way to cross the range with vehicles, so we’re forced to take a route that is three times the distance and loops north and then south again around the mountains. It takes all day and half the following day. A few miles from the target we pass through a small settlement called Kadjran, where we stop to buy a few supplies. We don’t stay long, because we don’t want to be noticed, and camp out in a high deserted fold of the hills, where the GPS tells us we’re only half a mile away from the fort.
As darkness falls we take the scarf from the Talib’s head and, this being Afghanistan, allow him to eat with us because there are courtesies to be observed. Then we tie his hands again, and return him to the metal bed of the pickup with a blanket.
The colour of the sky turns imperceptibly from turquoise to an ever-deeper purple, and we see the first stars appear. Above us, silhouetted against the sky like a primeval saw blade, lies the ridge to which we’ll walk in the morning, and from which we’ll have a view, at long last, of the place we’ve come so far to see.
15
The fort stands on a high narrow spur with a commanding view of the valley below. It is perhaps a hundred years old, and built in the form of a perfect square, the walls linking four circular bastions with defensive slits in their upper sections. A driveable track, cut into the steep approach from the front, links it to the valley floor in a coil of tight switchbacks. Behind the fort and on its flanks the barren slopes of the mountains rise another thousand feet or more. The closest of these rising slopes is at least 300 yards distant. Nearer to, a footpath leads from the side of the fort over the shoulder of the spur and into the next ravine, and a bigger track gives access to the ravine on the other side. They are too steep to be negotiated by vehicle. On the neck of the spur overlooking the fort sits a Soviet BMP like a stranded turtle, abandoned at least a decade ago and stripped even of its wheels. There’s no sign of life from within the fort other than a tiny plume of grey smoke, which drifts silently skyward from the central courtyard. It’s a picture of rural peace.
From a nest of boulders on a ridge above our final lying-up point, H and I have been watching through the Kite sight since dawn. Sher Del is with us, taking turns to peer at the target, and agrees that there’s nothing to indicate we shouldn’t drive there and back again without any surprises.
At 10 a.m., as the sun begins to lose the innocence of early morning and climbs with growing strength into the clear sky above, H looks at his watch and then at me.
‘We shouldn’t wait much longer,’ I say.
‘Then let’s go to work.’
We scramble down into our little camp, where Momen and Aref are nursing a kettle over a small fire. Our captive sits cross-legged on the ground with a scarf still tied over his head and his hands fastened behind his back.
‘Time he went back to find his donkey,’ says H after we have packed up the vehicles and are ready to leave. He cuts the cord on the Talib’s wrists and unties the scarf. We give him a glass of tea and he drinks it in silence with a strangely matter-of-fact expression. Then H gives him enough money for a few days’ food.
‘Now fuck off and get a proper job,’ says H, the gist of which Aref kindly translates. He’ll walk down into the village, get