A Dying Breed, page 19
‘I like ham?’
‘Yes. But it also tells me that you’re probably not a Muslim. How often do you see Mohammed with a ham sandwich?’
‘His mum probably can’t afford the ham.’
‘Mohammed is a Muslim. A proper one. And as you know, he’s also my best and most favourite student.’
Mohammed lifted his head and gave Rebecca a despairing look. ‘Aw, Miss—’
‘Sorry, Mohammed. Just trying to teach Steven something. I’m not picking on Steven because he’s a Muslim. Steven isn’t a Muslim. I’m picking on Steven because I think if he tried a bit harder, he could go far. And I’m not talking about the Bluewater shopping centre.’
Steven blushed and opened his exercise book. First battle of the day won with no casualties. Maybe it was going to be a good day.
The class was busy pulling at rubber bands with Newtonian measuring devices when the Year Five teacher knocked on the door. Rebecca waved him in. ‘Morning Mr Harris, how can we help you today?’
Ben Harris walked quickly to Rebecca’s desk and answered softly. ‘Morning. Listen, the Head’s asked me to cover your class for a few minutes, he needs to see you.’ There was a formality to his manner that Rebecca didn’t like but she nodded, explained the situation to the class and left the room, closing the door behind her. Halfway to the Head’s office she realised she was still holding a new piece of chalk in her hand. She knocked at the door and was called in immediately. He was sitting behind his desk, looking somewhat stiff and very pale. Then Rebecca saw the policeman. Her first thought was of her parents, and only afterwards of Patrick. She was surprised to realise it was the second thought that shook her harder. She refused the offer of a seat and stood while the policeman told her that her ‘partner’, as he put it, had been kidnapped by terrorists ‘identity unknown’ just hours after arriving in Kabul. There was no reason to believe he had been harmed and the Foreign Office, the Embassy in Kabul, the British military and the BBC were all working together ‘doing everything possible’. Rebecca took an unsteady step forward. She put her hands down hard on the headmaster’s desk for balance and felt the stick of chalk break in her fist. She felt sick. Then she started speaking, quickly.
‘His mobile wasn’t working but I thought maybe he just hadn’t set it up properly. I don’t know how you’d make his lousy mobile work in Afghanistan anyway, so I thought it wasn’t working or maybe he’d just turned it off. And I knew he’d ring me from a landline once he’d got himself sorted, I knew it might take time so I just thought—’ The policeman interrupted. She was talking nonsense, she knew that, but she didn’t want to stop talking, because what would she do then?
‘I’m sorry Ms Black. But I need to ask you something. On his risk assessment form at the BBC he listed you as his next of kin.’
‘Right?’
‘Just you. So, we were hoping you could help us inform Patrick’s parents?’
‘They don’t know?’
Outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, July 5th
Patrick stayed slumped in the white plastic chair for a long time, the heels of his hands pushing against his tired eyes, cold urine stinging at his thighs, a dull pain in his knee from kicking uselessly at the metal door. He felt frightened, helpless and ashamed. After an hour he heard some movement and then a voice from the other side of the sealed door. He jumped to his feet too quickly and had to put a hand on the wall for support.
‘Pat-rick Reid?’ The voice was deep and heavily accented.
‘Yes?’ He tried to sound strong, but his voice was weak.
‘I am going to ask questions, you answer them. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do not lie. If you answer the questions with honesty then the men will take the cement away, open the door and give you food, some water. If you lie, then we will leave things as they are. You will be unconscious in two days and dead not long after that. Do you understand what I say?’
Patrick swallowed. He was hungry and he didn’t want to die. ‘Yes. I understand.’
The questions all concerned the killing of Fazil Jabar. Why was he investigating the killing? Who was he working for? What had he discovered? There was a pause after each answer and he was frequently told to repeat himself or speak up until it seemed to Patrick that he was talking very loudly indeed, shouting almost. He told his interrogator that he and Karim were both working for the same man, an important British journalist, William Carver, who believed that Jabar had been murdered not by the Taliban but by someone else and for mysterious reasons.
Where was William Carver? In Kabul. At the BBC house. But he would be heavily guarded by now. Patrick didn’t know this for a fact but it seemed likely and it might help discourage this group, whoever they were, from going after William. There was another pause. Patrick got the impression someone was making notes or maybe relaying his responses to a third party.
‘Who is Karim Mumtaz?’
This was the most difficult question so far. What sort of answer might help keep Karim safe? That he was simply a young Afghan paid to translate for Carver? Or that he was more important, a BBC employee, someone whose life the Corporation would value? Patrick assumed that downplaying Karim’s importance would make his captors more inclined to cut him loose.
‘He is an ordinary Afghan. William Carver paid him to act as his translator on this trip. He knows very little.’
There was another pause. A long conversation in Dari which Patrick only heard half of. He was certain now that his interrogator was taking instructions down a phone line from elsewhere.
‘That is enough. Perhaps more questions later.’
He heard the sound of footsteps retreating and shouted out: ‘Wait, what about the food? Some water? I told the truth.’
But the man was gone. Patrick knew he had to try harder to hold himself together. He climbed out of his piss-wet trousers and hung them off the side of the camp bed to dry, then looked again at the cell. There was no obvious ventilation but somehow, from somewhere, he could smell cooking and, more faintly, excrement – from similar cells to his, perhaps, or a nearby toilet. He started walking again. Walking and counting. He counted the drips from water pipes he could hear but not see, he counted the steps he took up and down the cell, his head lowered but still brushing the ceiling, and he counted the dents in the metal door. As he was counting these, the door moved on its hinges. There was a scraping sound and his heart lifted, the cement was being broken away. His honesty was about to be rewarded. He felt an unexpected surge of gratitude.
Patrick’s first prison meal was a torn piece of flatbread, a boiled egg and a mug of hot, sweet black tea. It was delivered by one of the gunmen, who, either out of fear or disgust, kept as far from Patrick as he could. The man opened the door gingerly, kicking some of the loose cement out of the way with his sandalled foot. He motioned with his Kalashnikov for Patrick to move to the back of the cell. Then he bent and slid the tin plate across the floor. The egg rolled off the bread and across the filthy concrete. Patrick moved instinctively to retrieve it and the young guard reacted by barking some incomprehensible order and unslinging his rifle, pointing the barrel directly at Patrick’s heart. Patrick dropped the egg and put his hands above his head. Both men stared at the fallen egg, which had split open and lay in two bright white-and-yellow pieces on the dark floor. The guard sniffed, put his gun back behind his shoulder and left, locking the door noisily behind him.
Patrick took the egg, wiped it on his shirt and stuffed it greedily into his mouth. He ate and drank everything he’d been given and then resumed his walking and exercising. For an hour or longer he worked hard to tire his body before finally lying down on the hard bed, pulling the dirty blanket over his face and escaping into sleep.
19 Two Plus Two Equals Five
DATELINE: BBC house, central Kabul, Afghanistan, July 5th
On the roof of the BBC house in downtown Kabul the producer of the Ten O’Clock News was writing two names on large cue cards to ensure John Brandon didn’t get them wrong during his live broadcast. In capital letters he wrote PATRICK REID and KARIM MUMTAZ. William Carver watched, grim-faced. The kidnapping of a BBC journalist and his translator was the lead. In a few minutes Brandon would tell millions of Britons everything he knew about the circumstances and possible reasons for the kidnapping. This would not take long because Brandon knew very little. Not unusual, William reflected, but in this case no one else knew much more. Not even William himself, and the thought annoyed him. He watched while Brandon had a tissue tucked into his collar and a producer dabbed at his broad forehead with powder. Carver had never understood why anyone would want to watch, work in or appear on television news; identikit men and women in identical suits telling the same stories using the same punchy clichés. What mattered was that they looked good and the backdrop looked bad.
‘You’ve got some devastation in the back, yeah?’ Brandon was talking to his cameraman, who raised a thumb in reply. It was pretty easy in Kabul; to western eyes, virtually the whole city looked devastated. Brandon took a look over his shoulder and nodded, apparently satisfied. Four minutes to go. He sat back down. The presenter was wearing his trademark white suit over a white shirt. He sat close to his broadcast point, relaxed, one thick leg resting across the other, arms crossed loosely, smiling broadly. The top three buttons of his shirt were undone, allowing colleagues a generous view of his thick pelt.
In a business where many of his peers waged daily war against male pattern baldness, Brandon was proud to be hirsute. Even now, although his shirt cuffs were gathered neatly at the wrist with plain silver cufflinks, William could see a few sprigs of black arm hair spilling out. A feather of dark hair sat on top of each meaty knuckle. William recalled the conversations he used to have with Rob Mariscal about journalism; print versus broadcasting, radio versus television, vertical versus horizontal. Horizontal journalism waited upon events and then reported them. It waited for reports to be published, speeches made, elections held, wars waged and disasters visited. Vertical journalism set its own agenda; it was active, investigative and trouble-making. Horizontal journalism stood on the roof of a house in Kabul, adopted a serious tone and speculated wildly about the fate of Patrick Reid and Karim Mumtaz. Vertical journalism should be doing something else. As he chewed this over, he noticed Brandon rising to greet someone. Looking back over his shoulder he saw Captain Remora picking his way across the roof, tiptoeing around cabling and arc lights. As Remora drew closer he held up a hand to placate Brandon and to indicate that he’d be right with him before bending close to Carver’s ear. His breath was toothpaste fresh.
‘I’ve come to brief John and a few of the others but the Ambassador’s downstairs in his car. He wants to talk to you. Can you go down?’
‘’Course.’
William pulled himself to his feet. Back to vertical, back to work. As he walked towards the stairs that led from the roof he could hear Remora’s confident voice. He turned and saw Brandon listening attentively, his producer scribbling notes.
‘John, you’re absolutely the only one who is getting this. You can say that official sources have told you that every possible effort is being made to contact the kidnappers and find out what their demands might be. You can say that we suspect a Taliban group, probably the one linked to the killing of Fazil Jabar. Remember him?’
William stopped in at his room and grabbed his bag from the side of the bed, paused to gather his thoughts, then made his way to the front of the BBC house where two SUVs were parked either side of a black armoured Lexus. Ambassador Lever was sitting in the back seat. When he saw Carver he signalled to a British sergeant holding a general-purpose machine gun to let him pass. William opened the heavy door and climbed in. ‘Look at all this security, you must feel very flattered.’
‘I feel very stupid. Rolling around Kabul like this. Still, one Briton kidnapped in a day is embarrassing; two would be careless.’
William nodded. The cool air-conditioned car was a welcome respite from the hot Kabul night. ‘Well. What do you know?’
‘We’re making every effort to contact the kidnappers but we don’t have many leads. Taliban we guess but—’
Carver interrupted, raising his hand. ‘I heard the official version upstairs, Ambassador; Captain Remora is helping Brandon learn his lines. Tell me what you really know.’
Lever cast his eyes downwards and stared at the top of his Panama hat, which was resting on his lap. ‘Mr Carver, the official version is the only version I’ve got. I’m sorry. We’re in the dark. Like you.’
‘Two of my closest colleagues have been kidnapped and you can’t give me anything more than the official line?’
Lever sighed. He glanced at his driver, the only other person in the car and separated from them by a thick plate of glass. ‘It looks like the roadblock had been set up specifically to catch that vehicle. It hadn’t been in place long, according to witnesses, and obviously the entire gang disappeared as soon as those poor American soldiers were dead and your colleagues had been taken.
‘It was manned by men wearing Afghan National Army uniform, or something like it. Maybe they’d stolen the uniforms or maybe they were ANA doing a bit of freelance work or doing someone a favour. There are bad apples, as you know.’
‘There are whole barrel-loads of bad apples … as you know.’
Lever frowned. ‘We’ve also had a report of an abandoned SUV, up to its roof in water, to the north-west of the city somewhere. There’s a fair chance that’s the one involved in this, I’d have thought. So we are monitoring phone chatter, we’re tapping up informers, we’re keeping the Foreign Office and your Director General in the picture. We’re doing everything you’d expect us to do, Mr Carver, and if you have any other ideas, we’ll try those too.’
‘If you think this kidnapping is linked to the killing of Fazil Jabar, how about you try a bit harder to find Richard Roydon, speak to him. He might know something useful.’
Lever scoffed. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’
William hesitated, weighing up how much he wanted to tell this man, at this point. ‘All right. I’m going to be candid with you, Ambassador. I trust you – not completely, but enough. I told you about Roydon’s appointments at the tailor’s, same sort of time as Jabar’s, over a number of weeks.’
‘You told me, yes.’
‘Well I now know for certain that Roydon was on Passport Street on the evening of the bombing, driving a blue Toyota. I have proof.’
‘What kind of proof?’
‘Film and photos from the scene.’
The Ambassador lifted his eyebrows. William ignored him and continued. ‘I think he armed the explosives and placed them. They were packed inside a suitcase and it was a professional job but I think he screwed up. I don’t think the bomb killed Jabar outright. I’m pretty sure he had to go back in afterwards and finish the job. Fazil Jabar wasn’t killed by the blast, you see, someone put a bullet in his head. Karim was investigating all this last week, and a gang tried to kidnap him the very same day he discovered this information implicating Roydon. So what do you think of all that?’
Lever turned his hat slowly in his lap. ‘I think it sounds like a lot of far-fetched nonsense. What could Roydon’s motive possibly have been? Or am I to believe he’s simply gone insane?’
‘No, not insane. I’m guessing his motive is the usual one: money. While I was in London I met a contact of mine. Someone who knows quite a bit about some of the dodgy deals being done out here. He explained the Aftel connection.’
Lever grinned but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘The Aftel connection?’
William paused. He was about to go significantly further than he’d originally intended, to tell Lever more or less everything he knew. It was a risk but if it could help Patrick and Karim … ‘How much do you know about Fazil Jabar’s business dealings?’
‘Very little.’
‘He wasn’t just a politician, he was a businessman as well, and I’m told he was the main obstacle that stood in the way of Aftel winning a telecoms licence worth billions of pounds over the next few years. I assume you’ve heard of Aftel?’
‘Yes.’ The Ambassador’s impatience was obvious now; his irritation too.
‘And that you knew they were in the running for this licence?’
‘Yes, of course. I know them, they’re a good, solid British firm. The parent company is in the Footsie100. But it’s just ludicrous – and, I’m afraid, thoroughly naive – to try and link Jabar’s death to Aftel. Aftel’s parent company competes for licences all over the world. It’s what they do. It’s routine. They win some and they lose some.’
‘They don’t lose many. So you knew Jabar was involved in the rival bid. How about you? Were you involved?’
Lever looked William in the eye. The Lexus continued to cool and condition the air nicely but the Ambassador’s face was increasingly red. ‘I’m the Ambassador. Naturally I have an involvement. That’s part of my job, helping British businesses abroad. That really shouldn’t surprise you, Mr Carver. So, yes, I met some of the people behind the British bid. It was, it still is, a good bid, for all sorts of reasons.’
‘Yeah,’ said William, dismissively, ‘that’s what my contact said. A good bid, but not the winning bid. Not until the bomb went off, anyway. My source says that Jabar getting killed was good news for Aftel. Billions of pounds worth of good news.’
‘That’s a horrible way to think about anyone’s death, Mr Carver, dreadful. And it hardly amounts to proof that anyone connected to Aftel had anything to do with the bombing. Frankly, I find it impossible to believe that a rather unimpressive ex-Marine like Richard Roydon could be part of some grand plot, as you seem to be suggesting. I think this is a conspiracy theory too far, Mr Carver. You’re adding two and two and getting five.’
‘Really? I’ve been through Aftel’s accounts,’ said William, ‘and a couple of years ago it was just a twinkle in its parent company’s eye. Barely existed; it was an idea more than anything else, shares were trading at twelve pence. Now they’re worth over a fiver and rising. Imagine if you’d been in at the beginning of that, how much you might make. And do you know what else I found in those accounts? The name of the company Aftel employs for “security and technical services”: Rook.’
