Kara Kush

‘Tell me more.’

  So, she was getting softened up, he thought. He had been right after all. He had told the head of Department Six, that fool Zimanov, that he was sure that he could turn these aristocrats. They were all the same, greedy. She was wearing jeans, faded ones at that, but she craved the high life. He was sure of that.

  ‘Comrade Noorbibi. You can get a proper briefing and a real Party education at one of the new training centres. There is a lovely one at Dar al-Aman, with audio-visual aids, brand new from Hungary and the German Democratic Republic.’

  ‘But what would I be expected to do if I were sent abroad?’

  ‘I am not sure, but can give you, in confidence, some idea of possibilities, which I have learned from a high quarter.’ That sounded better than ‘from Zimanov’, who used to be doorman at the Yamaw Hotel. He had been sacked for stealing travellers’ cheques from Americans, and subsequently claimed that he had done it for political, socialist, motives.

  ‘The foreign press regularly tells lies about us. The West is full of fat lice, millionaire Afghan émigrés who constantly smear us and run down the country. They even say there is a civil war here.’

  ‘But aren’t there millions of Afghans living in misery, in huts and tents in Pakistan, and more than a million in Iran?’

  ‘Comrade Karmal has explained that for the British television. I saw it myself on video, here in Kabul. He told the interviewer that they were seasonal workers. They cross the border to help with harvests and so on.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes. Now, in addition to refuting this lying propaganda, these Zionists and capitalist smears, you will also make contact with others.’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘Well, some of them at least are probably your old school-friends. Young people who have joined the undercover liberation forces in the West.’

  ‘Terrorists, you mean, like the Red Brigades?’

  ‘I said, and you must not distort my words, the liberation forces of the people. Many of their members are from rich families. They do not yet understand our revolution, but they are very useful. They have entrée to the highest quarters. We can link up with them.’

  ‘A lot of people don’t want to co-operate with the USSR,’ she said.

  Quli laughed. ‘Have you never heard of the Russian phrase agent vlyyiyania, an “agent of influence”? They are to be found all over the world. Few of them want to act for us. They include trade union chiefs, politicians, academics, all sorts – even some millionaires. How do we recruit them? Why, we swamp them with praise, lavish hospitality on them, make them think that they are important. We don’t recruit them at all. Lenin laid down the line on them; he called them “useful idiots”.’

  She had never understood before why so many people in free countries seemed to be on the side of the communists. Now she did.

  Hatim Quli did not have his way. The girl refused to cooperate, in spite of the threats against her father. But Quli knew, from his training and his experience, that this was not the end of the story. He simply sent her away to be dealt with by Senior Case Officer Nikitin, of the State Security Committee of the USSR: for further investigation and, frankly, blackmail.

  Then he turned to the next target individual on his list. It was a very long one.

  8 A Formal Case has been Initiated

  The Great Castle

  at the mouth of the

  Paghman valley

  MAY 4

  Three days later Noor, now shackled hand and foot, was pushed forward for another interrogation. This, she saw at once, was to be a much more official kind of interview.

  There were three men behind the long table, and the scene was not the smelly office of the odious Quli, though the dungeons from which she had been brought were larger and more primitive. She knew where they were: knew the place from happier days. This was the spacious room which had once been the audience-chamber of the old castle guarding the road to Paghman. Now it was a Russian fortifikatsionnye. The khans of Paghman had built the stronghold in ancient times. Beyond it lay the first Paghman valley, the huge fertile garden north of the capital. Farther away again were the foothills, and after them the snow-capped Paghman mountain ranges. It was whispered that Kara Kush, The Eagle, the resistance leader, had his base there …

  Noor looked at the three men. One was grey-haired and had three stars on his red-and-gold shoulder-boards. A colonel. The second was a captain. Two Soviet soldiers. The third, a civilian by his dress, was probably KGB.

  She looked at the captain again. Not a Slav, she thought; probably from one of the USSR’s captive Central Asian republics, a southerner to them, a northerner to us.

  Captain Azambai was, in fact, a trained fighting soldier, a regular officer in the Soviet Fortieth Army, and he did not like political work. But the KGB was concerned with crimes against the State, and the Red Army was here to enable the Afghan government to control the country: and Azambai was on duty.

  He looked back at Noor, and found himself approving. Blue jeans and a shirt, and her feet were bare. A hostage or an agitator? Whatever she was, she did not seem at all afraid.

  The Commandant, the KGB case officer and the captain sat facing her, their table strewn with papers. The colonel spoke:

  ‘I am the Commandant, Colonel Slavsky, and this is Senior Case Officer Captain Nikitin of the State Security Committee of the USSR. He is seconded to Afghan State Security, and we are here to carry out a preliminary investigation of your case. It concerns anti-socialist propaganda and treason against the State. Your name is Noor Sharifi, radio producer, daughter of former Sirdar Akbar Sharifi, a State hydropower employee?’

  ‘I do not speak Russian,’ she said in Dari-Persian.

  The colonel turned to Azambai. ‘Comrade Kapitan, what does the prisoner say?’

  The girl looked at Azambai with a contempt that he could feel, almost like a blow.

  ‘She is saying, in her own language, that she does not speak Russian.’ Azambai dropped his eyes.

  The colonel said nothing.

  Captain Yuri Nitikin, slight, bespectacled, dressed in civilian clothes, shuffled his papers. ‘According to our records, she does speak Russian. What she means is that she will not. We get a lot of these cases. That’s what you are here for, Comrade Captain Azambai. You come from the same kind of people, don’t you? But you are a Soviet officer.’

  There was no doubt that the innuendo was there: Soviet, but not Russian.

  ‘I am from Soviet Turkestan, Comrade Senior Case Officer. My native tongue is almost indistinguishable from Dari-Persian. I understand what the prisoner says.’ He could tell, looking from the corner of his eye, that she could follow every word of the conversation.

  ‘Very well. Thank you Kapitan. Comrade Commandant, we shall proceed in Russian on this occasion and Captain Azambai will translate for the prisoner. But,’ he looked quite pleased at the prospect, ‘at our next session I am sure she will agree to speak in Russian.’

  He turned to Azambai again. ‘You will please translate what the Commandant said into Dari.’

  Azambai told her, in the Afghan tongue, what the two men had said.

  Nikitin looked at Noor over his spectacles. ‘Please identify yourself formally for administrative purposes.’

  She let Azambai translate.

  ‘I am Sharifi, Noor, daughter of Sharifi, the Sirdar Akbar, former Minister of Mines and Ambassador of His Majesty the King to various foreign courts. Is that what you want, Mr Turkestani?’

  ‘My rank and name are Captain Azambai, and you will address me as such,’ said Azambai. To the others he said, in Russian, ‘The prisoner concurs with the official identification.’

  ‘Citizen Sharifi,’ the KGB man was more comfortable in standard phraseology, ‘after considerable investigation which shows that you have been engaged in anti-State activity, slandering socialism, forming a network of accomplices, agitating against the fraternal armed forces of the Soviet Union and many other actions, all documen
ted and attested, I have to inform you that a Delo Formulyar, a Formal Case, has been initiated against you.’

  He paused. The woman was taking no notice of him.

  ‘Are you listening, citizen Sharifi?’ He raised his head to look at her.

  ‘All I know is that Hatim Quli tried to recruit me with cajolery and threats to go abroad as a spy: presumably on your behalf, like you use the Cubans and the East Germans. As a spy and confederate of terrorists. Now, a couple of days later, I find that you are claiming that you have done all sorts of investigations, all kinds of paperwork, making out that I am a danger to you. You’re just trying to frame me, that’s all. This is my country, not yours. Anti-State activity! What State? It is you who are trying to destroy the Afghan State!’

  Nitikin, head in his hand, calmly heard her out. Then he continued:

  ‘The decision has been approved, after due study, by the chief of the appropriate subsection of Afghan State Security, the KHAD, and the signed documents to that effect are here. They are all in order.’ He held up a paper.

  Azambai thought, She knows it’s a sham and that we’re out to use her for something. I wonder what they really want her for? There must be some strong reason for this detailed cover of legality – and for bringing in the Commandant. There must be dozens of people in the cells below. They were certainly not all going to be given such extensive treatment. She must be an important prisoner. Of course, she was an ambassador’s daughter …

  The case officer had rifled through a sheaf of papers. ‘Citizen Sharifi, silence and lies will not foil the agents of Soviet justice. We know all about you.’

  He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. What a silly little man, Noor thought. Without his power he would be nothing and nobody. Pathetic.

  ‘Yes, we know all about you. You attended a private school in Ealing, West London, where you also lived, in a privileged neighbourhood?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You were recruited by British Intelligence, overseas espionage, what they call MI – military intelligence – six, sixth section?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you deny that Century House, a tower block of offices on Westminster Bridge Road in London, is the headquarters of British Intelligence?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, it is. We know everything. Why did your family have a house in the same West London area as that of the spy-nest at Century?’

  ‘Westminster is in SW1, inner London, and Ealing is West. They aren’t near each other. Westminster Bridge Road is in the south-east area.’

  ‘Sharifi, I note your admission that you know the district where the British spy centre is located.’

  She looked at him with astonishment. ‘That’s not what I said …’

  He smiled, and bent briefly over his papers, pen in hand.

  ‘Now, citizen. You have travelled extensively throughout the capitalist world, under diplomatic cover, with your father?’

  ‘As a member of his immediate family, I was entitled to diplomatic immunities. That’s not “cover”: it’s standard practice, worldwide. Part of the international law of diplomacy, contained in treaties. It applies to the children of Soviet ambassadors, too: they’re not spies, are they?’

  ‘That’s just a quibble.’ He made another note, murmuring its contents as he wrote: ‘Admits to using diplomatic cover.’

  ‘You contacted many capitalists and other personalities and members of ruling circles?’

  ‘I know a lot of people outside.’

  Outside. She caught herself using that Russian term for the free world.

  ‘All quite innocently, of course.’ Nikitin smiled more broadly, exposing tiny, pointed teeth.

  ‘Captain Azam-Bai –’ she pronounced the syllables separately, to emphasize their meaning, Great-Chief, and she saw that he understood her. He was called Azambai because his ancestors had been rulers, once upon a time, in Turkestan …

  ‘Ask the case officer if he has ever heard of George Orwell.’

  ‘This Orwell is your contact, your confederate, your controller?’ Nikitin became excited. ‘English, American or Zionist?’

  ‘Orwell was a British author. He wrote about someone tortured by a rat.’

  ‘You are attempting to introduce irrelevancies to cover your guilt, citizen. It will not succeed. You do not know what a rat is like, because you have not lived among the starving people in England, where you were a pampered cosmopolitan.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘London is swarming with them, though not in your part of it, where the MI6 spy-nest is located. People are half-starved. They are frequently beaten by the fascist police, kept in squalor and teeming in mass prisons.’

  ‘No.’

  Noor was wondering whether she was losing her reason, imagining all this. She had to say something. All she could think of was, ‘You can easily drive me mad, but only God, whom you think doesn’t exist, can make you sane.’

  ‘You are under official legal-administrative detention, and it is forbidden to make speeches in these circumstances. Slanders and political statements in the guise of religious talk are offences in law.’

  ‘Nikitin, you fear words because you are a prisoner yourself. You need four walls to keep me under control. But the walls around you, you carry those with you all the time. My mind is free, if my body isn’t. Your mind and your body are enslaved, because you think and act only at the will of others.’

  The colonel was pretending to read something in a file. Azambai translated the words automatically, not allowing himself to heed their meaning. The two Russian soldiers who had brought Noor in were delightedly winking at one another and, indicating Noor, tapping their foreheads. Noor stopped talking. Nothing would get through to these people, if what she said was true. If it had not been she would not have been here.

  Case Officer Nikitin was droning on. ‘You are under detention for your own good, to prevent the just anger of the people from exploding against you, as it doubtless would if you were at liberty.’

  Noor shook her manacles at him. ‘I suppose these are to prevent people from attacking me?’

  He smiled, gums showing above the little grey teeth. ‘It should be obvious, except to those who do not want to understand, that you have been put under that restraint to prevent you attacking the lawful authorities.’

  ‘And do I get a lawyer?’

  ‘All in good time. Socialist justice is not the sham that bourgeois law amounts to. We have no “presumption of innocence” because, with us, innocent people are never arrested or charged. Therefore you are undoubtedly guilty. We are determining the extent of your guilt, so that your sentence shall not be too light or too harsh. Your laywer will be there at your trial, and will give details of your repentance, and also explain whether you were led astray or improperly brought up. And if you have named your accomplices, you might get a corrective sentence rather than a capital one. Treason, in Afghan Law – as in all socialist lands – means death, of course. I am only here to investigate and advise.’

  ‘Then what is the purpose of this rigmarole?’

  ‘I have just told you, and there is nothing to add. Now,’ the case officer leant forward, hands on the table, ‘there is another point. You have only one close relative, your father. Failure to confess in your case would mean that we would have to investigate whether his loyalty is sound. Who knows what the outcome of that might be?’

  The threat was so strong that even the colonel, who was trying to show no feelings, turned sharply to look at the man.

  ‘That is blackmail.’ She pursed her lips as if she was about to spit.

  ‘That statement will be added to your file, since it constitutes slandering a State functionary in the course of his duty.’ He was not annoyed in the slightest by her attitude, Azambai observed. No doubt this sort of thing had happened to him a hundred times before. Nikitin made a note in the dossier before him.

  ‘You are blackmailing me with threats about my
father. Are you doing the same to him, about me?’

  Nikitin almost purred. ‘Citizen, so far as we know, citizen Akbar Sharifi is working voluntarily for the State. If, as you seem to imply, he may need some pressure before working wholeheartedly for reconstruction, it sounds as if he might need investigation. But let me say at this point that we have no reason to suppose that he is not a loyal supporter of your April Revolution.’

  ‘You mean that he has gone in with you?’

  Nikitin said nothing. He had found that there was a great deal of truth in the saying, ‘saying nothing is always saying something’. Give people time and they could torture themselves well enough to make any other pressure merely additional.

  Azambai suddenly began to feel angry. It took all his self-discipline to keep him in his seat. A prisoner of war, yes. Someone who had been captured on the field of battle, yes. One could apply pressure, threats of death even. Presumably such people knew the risks inherent in taking up arms. But a woman? A political prisoner? This was no work for soldiers. Or was the Army just an extension of the Party? He recalled, as if in answer, what a fellow officer, a real Party enthusiast, had once said to him in the USSR: ‘Without the Party, Comrade Azambai, there would be no Army: always remember that.’

  No Army. If there were no Soviet Army, at least the Afghans would be masters in their own country … he stopped himself. This was no way to think. He was not married, but he had a family: parents, brothers, cousins, all in the Soviet Union, just a few hundred kilometres to the north.

  Nikitin was talking again. ‘And such a serious view is already taken of your conduct that you may be sent to Tula, in the Soviet Union, for full confession and rehabilitation.’

  Azambai saw it now. Her father must be very valuable to them, and they wanted to keep him at work. That was what it was all about. Sending her to Russia would make sure that he did. Taking hostages and sending them away was one of the most effective methods of keeping people docile that the authorities knew. It was rife in the USSR, an old Russian tradition even before communism. And it was working in Afghanistan almost as effectively.