— That is a matter for her father. She has lost her job. He has been humiliated. I would imagine her life is difficult right now. She only has herself to blame.
Leo was clasping the bundle of incomplete letters in his pocket. He imagined his daughters listening to this conversation, he imagined Raisa standing beside him, and knew exactly how they would react. Outraged, they would plead for clemency; they would petition Vashchenko for Fyodor and Ara to be shown mercy. They would not understand that there was nothing Leo could do. They would not accept that as an excuse to stand idly by. But even imagining their anger, Leo was too beaten down, too tired, to stand up to this judgement, sensing its inevitability regardless of anything he might say or do. He was just an adviser, a man on the margins, paid for opinions whether they were heeded or not. He’d tried to save the couple. The satisfaction he might gain from outrage and indignation were of no use to them now. He mumbled:
— I tried.
Vashchenko and Nara looked at him. The captain asked:
— What did you say?
Returning the conversation to the investigation, Leo pointed out:
— How can we solve the murders when we don’t even have a suspect? You said yourself the body of the attacker was removed.
— We have a lead.
— Who?
Seeming to ignore the fact she didn’t speak fluent Russian, the captain addressed Nara directly:
— Your parents.
Shocked, she evidently understood what had been said, repeating in broken Russian:
— My . . . parents?
The captain registered Nara’s distressed response. He turned to Leo.
— Her parents have been picked up and taken into custody. I want her to question them. I’d like you to help.
Leo was being asked to act as an interrogator. Nara said again, her Russian improving with the practice:
— My parents?
Greater Province of Kabul
8 Kilometres East of the City of Kabul
Same Day
Unaccustomed to using an army vehicle, or any vehicle other than a bicycle, Leo drove slowly. The allocation of a Soviet UAZ-469, a Russian version of the American Jeep with bulletproof windows and reinforced-armour sides, was an attempt to ensure their safety. There were distress flares in the back, spare gasoline, a first-aid kit, water, dry rations, guns and ammunition. Even so, he much preferred his bicycle as a way of getting around. The dust trails launched up from the back tyres of the jeep formed a plume of sand that rose for at least twenty metres, signalling the vehicle’s presence to the entire valley. Captain Vashchenko had insisted that they take the UAZ-469, not understanding that driving a conspicuously Soviet vehicle made it far more likely that someone would shoot at you. The belief in technology as a solution to the dangers of the insurgency was flawed. The armour and bulletproof glass might protect Leo and Nara today but in a few months the enemy would improvise new methods of destruction. The Soviet response would be to increase the vehicle’s defences, to reinforce the doors and clad the undercarriage. But it was always easier to destroy something than to protect it and that was ultimately why Leo was sure the edifice of this occupation would fail: there was too much to protect, with too many people seeking to destroy it. No matter how many troops were sent, or how much money was spent, the imbalance would remain.
Seated next to him, Nara had hardly spoken since being given the orders to interrogate her parents. Shortly after daybreak, her mother and father had been extracted from their home village, a Spetsnaz team securing the area, pulling them from their house and bundling them onto the helicopter. Hearing this, Nara had asked if they’d been injured, concerned for their welfare, convinced that they were innocent of the allegations. In her mind she was heading to the prison with one agenda: to arrange their release.
Leo preferred to travel in silence; however, in this silence he could hear Nara’s thoughts as clear as if she were speaking aloud: her attempts to argue the evidence and to defend her parents’ behaviour.
They love me.
They would never hurt me.
They’re peaceful people.
They’re good people.
I’m their daughter.
Puzzling over how best to prove their innocence, busy constructing explanations as to why her parents happened to be away when the attack took place, Nara finally couldn’t resist testing her arguments on him.
— My father has built more of Kabul than any other man alive. He is a creator, a visionary, not a terrorist. He might be old fashioned. Most men are. I might have disappointed him in some respects. That does not make him a murderer.
Leo took his eyes off the road, regarding this beautiful young woman with her large pale-green eyes. Quite unlike Raisa, she was naive and earnest – it was impossible to imagine Raisa ever being so gullible. Raisa was a survivor and the shrewdest woman Leo had ever known. He was unsure if Nara Mir wanted him to contradict her. Without answering, Leo turned back to the dirt road. Though the swirls of dust, coming into view directly ahead, was the outline of Pul-i-Charki prison.
Though the plans and design for the prison predated the Communist Revolution, the completion of the flity coincidentally corresponded with the arrival of the Revolution, creating the impression that one could not exist without the other: an infamous political prison required a revolution as much as a revolution required an infamous political prison. Remarkably, this was Leo’s first time here. He’d avoided Pul-i-Charki, declining any assignments connected with it. There was no need for him to go inside to know what kind of place it was. Conditions would be inhumane. Degradation and humiliation would be institutionalized. Under the reign of the former president, guards preferred broken soda bottles as a torture instrument of choice, displaying an inexplicable loyalty for an American soda brand that could be bought in Kabul, a type of fizzy, orange-flavoured sugar water called Fanta. There were the more familiar methods, some lifted directly from the Soviet model, including electrodes, bare knuckles and truncheons. Savagery had its clichés too.
The familiarity was not limited to the instruments of terror but extended to the lines spoken by its lead players. Aarif Abdullah, one of the former guards in charge of Pul-i-Charki, had boasted to Leo:
A million Afghans are all that should remain alive – a million Communists, and the rest, we do not need. We’ll get rid of all of them.
This indifference to human life, this absurd and chilling pomposity, could have been the anthem of authoritarianism. These grandiose proclamations were made by men drunk on the power of life and death, unaware that they were behaving more or less exactly the same as the Soviet guards and prison governors who’d lived thirty or forty years before them, thousands of miles away, surrounded by snow and ice, rather than dust and desert. Despite their supreme power they expressed no trace of individuality or personality, as if power possessed their minds and made puppets of them, these would-be gods.
As Leo came to a stop, Nara became even more flustered, her hands fidgeting. She opened the glove compartment. There was a pistol and a clip of ammunition. She shut the glove compartment. Briefly, Leo wondered if she was going to be sick. She looked at Leo, utterly lost.
— But I’m their daughter.
Leo took out his sunglasses, glancing at the dirt on the lens and not bothering to clean them. They’d arrived.
Greater Province of Kabul
10 Kilometres East of the City of Kabul
Pul-i-Charkhi Prison
Same Day
Like a sprawling desert fortress, the prison was surrounded by yellow-brick outer walls, three times the height of a man, running unevenly across the terrain, linking squat guard towers with pyramidal roofs. Rake-thin guards in ill-fitting uniforms slouched in the shadows, antique rifles slung over their shoulders. The scene would not have looked out of place in an American Western, the frontier outpost, housing gunpowder, whiskey and stables. Leo regarded the institution through the smudged lens of his aviator sunglasses, hi
s eyes drawn less to the building itself and more to the vast space around the prison. It was in the middle of nowhere, rising from an arid plain; there was no clue for its existence: a fortress with nothing to protect, no river, or valley, no crops or people, as if it had been built thousands of years ago, surviving s away, the reason for its construction was eroded by the sand. There was no doubting the symbolism of this far-flung place: geographically and morally beyond the reach of civilization, a world of its own. Leo had heard talk of fifteen thousand people being executed here but he was numb to these statistics, numb to notoriety. Over the course of his life he’d heard so many numbers about so many different prisons, seen so many lists, heard so many whispered atrocities. Whatever the true number might be, it was certain that not one of those men or women had received proper burials, their bodies tossed into shallow graves outside the walls. Perhaps that’s why they’d designed the prison to look like a fortress, to guard over the angry souls trapped in the sand. It was a fanciful idea and one Leo might have taken more seriously if he had ever believed in life after death.
He entered the prison-fortress, akin to being allowed into a medieval castle through the great gates. And like a medieval castle, this was a facility concerned solely with the preservation of power. These walls had nothing to do with justice. The Soviet occupation force had immediately recognized the prison’s importance and sent a detachment of soldiers, as many as to the power stations and government ministries. This was where the dirty work of protecting a regime took place, processing the risky elements of the population. Soviet objections to the previous President’s techniques weren’t underpinned by morals, there was nothing wrong with a bloody purge, but murder had to be smart, and for the benefit of the party, rather than a personal grievance. Indiscriminate murder was a tactical mistake, undermining the Communist regime; murder needed to pacify, not aggravate, to make the job of the occupation easier, not more complicated.
Though he did not know them, the Soviet soldiers nodded at Leo as he passed them by, one foreigner saluting another. There was no such camaraderie between soldiers of different nationality: the Afghans and Soviets weren’t mixing, separated not merely by language but by profound mistrust. Only three months ago Pul-i-Charki had been under the direct control of a tyrannical president shot dead by the Soviets. Some of his deputies had been also been killed, but many of his prison guards were still here, subsumed beneath a new tier of management. Within a matter of minutes Leo counted three distinct groups: the Soviet troops, the new Afghan guard and the remnants of the old guard. If anyone asked him to write a report he’d argue the chances of an uprising were high. Corruption, betrayals and enemy informers were inevitable. His recommendation would be for Soviet reinforcements to take over the prison entirely. This unreliable patchwork of allegiances was repeated across the army and police. Leo knew of military advisers who believed the only solution was to have the Soviets do everything. Integration and cooperation were a fiction, peddled by politicians reluctant to commit more troops.
Nara had regained some composure, fearful of seeming weak in this fierce and unfriendly environment. As far as Leo could ascertain, she was the only woman officer. Hundreds of eyes trailed her with a muddle of lust and contempt. They were being shown the way by a highly obsequious prison governor, newly appointed by the regime and eager to please. He gave a commentary on his changes to the prison, pointing out various details, including the newly cleaned and improved kitchens that would provide basic but wholesome food. Leo remarked:
— Not difficult to improve on the food if the previous prisoners weren’t being fed.
The governor seemed stunned that not only could Leo understand and speak Dari, he could also make jokes in the language. He lahed loudly.
— You are right: any food is better than no food. That is true.
Unless his good humour concealed a darker soul, the man didn’t stand a chance. Leo guessed that he’d last no more than a month.
Nara had fallen back a little, her way of indicating that she wanted to talk out of earshot. Leo waited for the governor to hurry ahead to unlock a door and stopped, turning to Nara. Her voice trembled with emotion.
— They can’t see me like this.
— Like what?
— In a uniform . . . My parents.
— Do they know you’re a member of the secret police?
She shook her head, adding:
— You haven’t taught me how to question suspects. I’m training to be a teacher. I shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t make sense. There are others more suitable for this job.
— You were able to make an arrest. You can do this.
— I can’t.
— The fact that they’re your family should make no difference. Your family is the State.
— I’m scared.
If she had not been so merciless towards the deserting soldier Leo might have felt sorry for her.
— You’re not here to ask questions. You’re here to provoke them. The captain hasn’t sent you because he thinks you’re a skilled interrogator. There will be people already here who’ll handle the interrogation. You’re nothing more than a prop.
— A prop? I don’t understand.
— These interrogations are theatrical: people are brought in for effect. You’ll be paraded before your parents. That’s all. You’re not expected to ask any questions.
— I can’t do this.
The governor was lingering nearby, trying to ascertain the problem. A trace of impatience crept into Leo’s voice.
— Nara Mir, you’re an agent. You work for the State. You can’t find a task unpalatable and refuse to obey. In the end, you do as you’re told. You do whatever’s necessary. I have failed you as a teacher if I haven’t made that clear.
Nara forgot herself, suddenly angry, snapping at him:
— Would you interrogate your own parents?
Leo put a hand on her shoulder, a gesture of support that was not backed up by his reply.
— These dilemmas feel fresh and raw to you. But they’re old to me. They’re like a song I’ve heard too many times. Try to realize the awfulness of your position today isn’t remarkable, or exceptional, it’s ordinary.
Same Day
An entire wing had been appointed for the more important political prisoners and their interrogations. The stone floors were cleaner, the guards were more alert, and the overhead fans worked, a sure sign there was a concentration of Soviet officials nearby. One man greeted them, another adviser exported to Afghanistan. His expertise was the handling of prisoners, the extraction of information – a professional interrogator.
— My name is Vladimir Borovik.
Medium build, with greying hair and soft hands, Borovik had the anonymity of a mid-ranking bureaucrat. He was younger than Leo, perhaps forty years old, and he displayed unnecessary deference. It grated on Leo, the implication that he was somehow the authority in a place like this. More likely, the man was angling for a friendship, a fellow Soviet to keep him company in town and show him how to survive the next few months, where to drink, where to find women. Borovik ignored Nara completely, despite her being the crucial element in the interrogation. He spoke in Russian, at speed, giving Leo no time to translate:
— I only arrived a couple of weeks ago. They have me staying at a military base. I can’t say I like this country very much. But the pay is so good I couldn’t say no. I’ll earn five times the amount that I would back home. I plan to complete six months, maybe a year if I can stomach it, and then go home and retire. That’s the dream. I’ll probably end up going home, spending all my money in a month or two, and then I’ll be back here again.
Eventually Nara was forced to interrupt, putting to use her limited Russian:
— Excuse me, I did not understand.
Leo said in Dari:
— Nothing worth translating.
The prison governor had melted away, leaving them alone, not wanting to be involved. As they walked to the cell Borovik
whispered to Leo, inexplicably lowering his voice as though they were in danger of being overheard:
— The woman’s parents haven’t asked about her well-being or safety, not once.
He nodded at Nara, continuing:
— I’ve told them she was viciously attacked. They don’t seem to care. There’s no question in my mind that they were involved. The father is a proud man. In my experience a proud prisoner is the easiest to break.
Nara looked at Leo for a translation. Leo said nothing, allowing Borovik to continue.
— The father is something of a bore. If he’s not silent and solemn, he’s ranting and raving about various political issues. The mother is always silent, even when I ask her a direct question. I can’t wait to see how they react to their daughter.
He looked at Nara carefully, adding:
— She’s a tasty one. Any chance she’s up for some fun later? She’s one of the more laid-back women here, isn’t she? I’ve been told only the ones in uniforms are the ones you can mess about with. A face mask means they don’t fuck, right?
Frustrated, Nara implored Leo:
— What did he say?
— Your parents are not cooperating.
Reaching the cell Borovik gave precise instructions about the order of their entrance.
— I will enter first, then you and finally Nara Mir. It is important that there is a gap of at least a minute between your entrance and hers, so that both parents presume that there are no more new arrivals. She will then step inside the cell and surprise them.
The cell was unlocked while Leo translated to Nara. She was struggling to pay attention. Finally she gave Leo a small nod, indicating that she understood her part in this performance.
A guard opened the steel door. Borovik entered, Leo followed behind. Her parents were seated on two chairs, side by side. Her mother was not wearing the chador, her face exposed. Ashamed, she remained stooped, hunched over, meeting no one’s eye, staring at the patch of stone floor between her feet. In contrast, her father’s hands were on his knees, head held high. Leo didn’t need to ask any questions. There could be no doubt that this man had either directly sanctioned or been a party to the plans to murder his daughter. Borovik was also right about the man’s pride. It bristled around him.