The Network - Jason Elliot [74]
I concur. We sit and cradle our glasses.
‘Massoud was never cash-averse, but he’s a man you can ride the river with. I sure hope we can shore him up before he has to give up his last patch of turf.’
‘What do you think are the chances of that?’ I ask.
‘Slim,’ she says. ‘Mighty slim.’ Then she recalls her last mission to Panjshir, and it’s obvious she was impressed, like so many others, by Massoud’s charisma, energy and humility.
‘We were fixing him up with a hotline to Langley and a box of tricks from the NSA so’s we could listen in on Taliban comms. All of a sudden there’s artillery causing a ruckus down the valley and turning his men into buzzard food. Took us up to the head of the valley so’s to keep us out of range, then heads back to the fight. Damn. Still found time to look after us later, making sure we were fed and warm. Son of a bitch slept on a bedroll just like a cowboy. Next day he’s directing the war again and busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.’
‘God, don’t make me laugh,’ I protest, clutching at my rib.
‘Been meaning to ask you if you’ve been in a fight recently,’ she says.
‘Just with my friends.’
‘You’re not your average gringo spook,’ she says, chuckling as she refills our shot glasses. ‘And I’ve met a few. Self-satisfied sons of bitches, most of them. You’re not a man who lives a life of quiet desperation.’
‘You’re not your average cowgirl,’ I say. ‘Cowgirls don’t quote Thoreau, for one thing.’
I ask her how she got into the spook side of life, and she surprises me by saying it’s the family business. Her father, she says, was friends with ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services, the secret American organisation dedicated to espionage during the Second World War. I know that the OSS was a parallel entity to Britain’s SOE, and its daring and innovative founder became a prodigy of behind-the-lines derring-do, rather as David Stirling became a legend as the founder of the SAS. Years later her father, a dedicated cold war warrior, had ended up as head of station in a number of Middle Eastern countries, in the golden days, as Grace calls them, when the Company actually had reliable human assets in the region.
I see no reason not to tell her that my father was involved with SOE, and that I’d joined the army with the vaguely romantic ambition of following in his footsteps. ‘Wasn’t quite the army I thought it would be,’ I say. ‘I had a shot at becoming a proper spook, but made the mistake of committing what they call an indiscretion. As I am now,’ I say, ‘by telling you this.’
‘I appreciate your looseness,’ she says, meaning frankness, but it’s probably no coincidence that she’s plying me with whisky, probably the oldest tongue-loosening technique in the book. I try to work the conversation back to Afghanistan.
‘What will happen?’ I ask. ‘I mean if Massoud’s forced out.’
‘Like I said. Whole of Afghanistan’ll turn into a training camp for Obi-Wan and his hotheads. Won’t leave us with a lot of choice. There’s a plan,’ she begins, then catches herself. ‘I can’t talk about that, Tony. Hell, there’s always a plan.’
‘For America to intervene?’ It’s unimaginable.
‘Listen.’ She puts her glass on the edge of the table. ‘We know al-Qaeda’s trying to kill Massoud. Someone’s been guarding his shoes, for crying out loud, in case they try to put a dose of anthrax in them. If they get lucky, we lose our one ally on the ground. I don’t want to have to spell it out. We’ve been acquiring a target archive in Afghanistan for nigh on two years. We may have survived the millennium, but the system was blinking redder than a coyote’s ass in heat with all the threats cables we had coming in. Most of it single-threaded and too damn vague to be actionable, but all we need is