It was time for the news. In English. Akbar had once laughed, as so many others did, at the lilting accent, which people who had been educated in Britain called ‘Bombay Welsh’. Not any more. Now it was his only channel to the real world. Nothing about Afghanistan, except that there were now three million refugee Afghans, driven out by napalm, phosphorus bombs and terror, sheltering in Pakistan. Perhaps a quarter of the entire population. Then …
‘His Royal Highness, Prince Jamal ibn Zaid Al Narabi, son and heir of His Majesty, King Zaid Al Narabi, Monarch of Narabia, the North Arabian Kingdom, will visit Pakistan in six weeks’ time, heading a mission to inspect some of the two hundred and eighty Afghan refugee camps in the North West Frontier region. His Royal Highness has especially asked that the mission be regarded as a private one, and in deference to his wishes there will be no State welcome.
‘He is expected to arrive in Peshawar on June 12th and will be accompanied by only a small personal staff, though these will be individuals of high rank. The Governor of the North West Frontier Province has intimated that it would be regarded as a seemly gesture if, in their private capacities, the people of the region were in evidence in the streets on the day of his arrival, perhaps with Narabian flags, to express brotherly greetings to the representative of our fellow Islamic country. After the news, there will be a talk entitled “Narabia, today and yesterday”.’
Akbar jumped up, ignoring the twinge of rheumatism which sudden action always produced in his leg. ‘Samir Jan. We’ve got it! That’s the answer. I see it all now!’
‘Excellency?’
‘Didn’t you hear?’
‘I don’t understand all that English. Frankish tongues sound like dzz, dzz, nothing more, to me.’
‘An Arab prince is visiting Pakistan soon, Samir. He will be in Peshawar city, no distance from here, just over the border.’
‘Excellency?’
‘He is the son of King Zaid, may his good fortune continue! You were there with me for three years, Samir, while I was Ambassador at his court. His Majesty knows me well. He has oil money, billions of dollars.’
‘I remember, Excellency, I can still speak Arabic.’ Samir still did not understand what his master was driving at. Like a good servant, he waited.
‘He’ll buy the gold from us, and bank the money in Switzerland. Then we can contact the freedom fighters, who are being slaughtered for lack of guns. They could buy rockets, everything. Our country might yet be saved, Samir!’
Samir nodded, slowly. ‘May I be your sacrifice, Excellency. You know better, of course, but you can’t go to the prince, you’re under close supervision, arrest in fact. And how could we transport the gold from here to Pakistan?’
‘Transport is easy, Samir. We are in the country of the Durrani Clan, and it stretches from here, through Pakistan, to the Arabia Sea. They have been smuggling from there to the Gulf, in dhows, for centuries. They’ll do it.’
Akbar’s eyes were gleaming, and he tugged at his neat goatee excitedly.
‘As to who will go to the prince, Samir, there is only one person who would do it, and do it at whatever cost. Someone who has seen the gold and knows Narabia. That person is you, Samir.’
With that optimism which, over the centuries, has unseated as many Afghans as it has supported, Samir immediately said, ‘Yes, I could do that, Excellency. But I do not remember the prince.’
‘That’s not important. He was studying at Oxford when we were at Hadiqa City, but you can prove that you have been there if you talk to him, and you can show him samples of the gold. Then he is bound to take the message to King Zaid.’
Samir considered it. ‘Mumkin – it’s possible.’
The old man smiled and touched Samir on the shoulder. ‘Good. I’m tired now, Samir. Let’s leave it at that for today.’
In the morning, again getting permission from Yilderim by offering Salik as a hostage, the two men went back to the cave. At the entrance, the old man slipped off his sandals and went down into the shaft. There was no sign that anyone else had been there: piles of dust which he had left, craftily positioned, the last time, were intact.
The pair of them did not stay long: only long enough to collect, in the haversack which he carried on inspections, a hundred or so of the gleaming mohurs. It was on this visit that Akbar noticed that there were smaller passages, and air vents, in the treasure-cave. He would be able to use those, he thought, to bring cables, to install lighting in the warren of passages. That would be useful in the shifting of the hoard.
He had already worked out that the treasure, estimated roughly by the number of almost perished sacks piled up in the tunnels, had a present-day value of something like four hundred billion dollars. It didn’t look like it: gold weighs heavy, but takes up remarkably little space. It was a sum equal to the entire monetary reserves of the oil countries: more gold than any single country on earth possessed. Nearly three times the entire external assets of Saudi Arabia.
It would not do to send Samir yet; they would first have to work out some scheme for getting the treasure out. Transport to the coast would be easier: Durrani trucks. Then smugglers’ dhows to the Gulf.
All that day Akbar surveyed the site. Yes, he thought, that was it. It would be quite possible to remove the coins through the hills, via the ruined mosque, since, although it commanded a view of much of the countryside below, it nestled among features which sheltered the route from observation.
This must have been in the mind of whoever hid the gold, or whoever built the mosque. A treasury with a way to get in and out without being seen.
Then Yilderim announced that an inspection team, Afghan and Russian, was visiting the site, ‘for evaluation’, in three weeks’ time. This was both good and bad, Akbar realized. It meant that Engineer Yilderim would start frenzied activity, having the place cleaned and painted, working out wall-charts of progress, and generally demonstrating his value. It also meant that Akbar would be left more to himself, and could get on with the wiring of the lights in the treasure tunnels. But it meant, too, that he could not yet risk sending Samir to Pakistan. His disappearance might make the Russians decide to strengthen the guards, or arrest Samir’s brother – any number of possibilities. Akbar was prepared to meet problems as they arose if he had only Yilderim to deal with, but not if he was faced by the tougher, ultra-suspicious, socialist rescuers from the north.
Going to and fro, being in and out of the treasure caverns so often, may have made Akbar and Samir careless. Just after the Russians had made their inspection and left, the old man and his servant climbed to the ruined mosque for a final check, without maintaining their usual vigilance. When they came out of the mosque and sat in the shade of a wall, resting after their climb, they saw the spy. He walked past without seeing them, at a slightly lower level, and then paused. He had found Akbar’s sandals, pointing to the entrance to the steps. They recognized him; a police agent from Kabul ostensibly concerned with security, but probably posted here to keep an eye on Yilderim. As they watched, he went down the steps leading to the treasure cave. ‘You let him get out of here alive,’ said Akbar, his ageing face as hard and desperate as anything Samir had ever seen, ‘and our country is finished. Afghanistan is dead. The Army and the KGB will destroy us as they destroyed the rest of Central Asia.’
‘Excellency, I promise. By my head and eyes. He is a dead man.’ The lithe six-foot figure of Samir slipped away like a wraith.
Former Minister Akbar made a little gesture of despair and turned away, shoulders hunched. He sat down and lay back in the shade. Everything depended on Samir.
Samir’s body tensed with total concentration, as he tiptoed along the tunnel towards where the spy was now standing, flashlight in hand, absorbing the incredible truth.
Suddenly there was a click and the shaft was flooded with light, bright as high noon. The spy had found the switch operating the lights which Akbar had so laboriously installed.
The two saw each other at the same moment. Sam
ir sensed rather than saw the Browning in the spy’s hand. There was a slight bend in the passage which would intrude on the gunman’s line of sight, so Samir threw himself against the wall. Then he started forward as the first shots rang out, ricocheting off the hard rock of the tunnel. The firing stopped. The man would shoot again, Samir knew, but perhaps later rather than sooner. He would have deduced by now that Samir did not have a gun and would probably wait until a minimum distance separated them.
Only a few yards to go now. Something hit his toe and he reached down. It was the spy’s flashlight, which he had dropped when he reached for his gun. Samir picked it up and threw it as part of the same movement, straight at his adversary’s head. It missed by an inch and crashed in pieces against the wall. The place was full of cordite fumes and the spy’s face emerged from the smoke, grinning evilly.
Samir dived for the man’s ankles.
As he launched himself forward and down he was aware of the spy’s confident crouch, aiming the gun at him as calmly as a man with an aerosol of insecticide, about to destroy a bluebottle.
Oh God, it shouldn’t be like this.
Again, a shot, and in the same moment a thump on his shoulder, like a giant’s punch. The sick, sick feeling as he doubled up; then a great gasp, a reflex, as if his body screamed to heal itself with air.
Samir lay still. He heard groaning and realized the sound came from himself. He looked up and saw his adversary’s face wet with sweat but gleaming with triumph. The man was pushing another cartridge clip into the gun-butt. Samir felt death seconds away. So this was how it happened. It was not at all like in the films.
In a second or two now, he knew, the spy would bend down, hold the automatic pistol close to his ear, and fire a single shot. Something buzzed at the back of Samir’s head and became a man’s voice, the voice of his village preacher, the ancient sage and Mulla, Mulla Jan. ‘Ya Hafiz, Ya Hafiz, O Protector, O Protector,’ it said. The Mulla had taught him to say that when he was afraid.
And he was afraid. Too afraid to ask for mercy. Too afraid to think.
Now the spy was ready to deliver the coup de grâce. There was his face, there was his breath; the gun barrel would be coming down right this moment: unless …
Suddenly Samir felt as if he was watching the scene, with himself in it, from a distance. Something extra was working in his brain, at a speed the rest of his mind could not register.
He’d fallen sideways, against the wall, jammed against it, like a twisted tree trunk. His right shoulder was throbbing, and his shirt was soaked with blood. His left side was pressed to the wall, the arm bent, the elbow in a depression, one of the niches which, centuries ago someone had hewn out to hold a lamp.
His fingers were moving now, feeling, clutching. They closed over something round, hard, and sharp. It was the beaked part of a Greek or Roman baked clay lamp.
As the spy bent down – quite slowly, as though savouring the moment – Samir, using his left shoulder as a lever, his elbow as a fulcrum, the beaked lamp in his head as a dagger, swung around and jerked himself upward. Gasping with pain, he struck straight at one of those infernal eyes.
After that, it took only a few seconds. The spy was blinded and in no condition to fight a man of Samir’s build, even with a bullet in his shoulder.
‘My turn, Comrade Kabul swine,’ said Samir. He picked up the spy’s gun and shot him, cleanly, through the back of the neck.
Samir’s shoulder wound was bad, but not really dangerous, Akbar decided when Samir stumbled into daylight. But he would now have to get away immediately, Akbar realized, before anyone got to know about his injuries, and linked it with the disappearance of the spy.
In considerable pain, Samir set off within the hour, on foot, his wound covered in cotton waste and bound by a thick turban-length of cloth. A few miles out of Kajakai he stopped in a village. There the blacksmith, accustomed to such problems and asking no questions, dug out the bullet and cauterized the wound with a piece of red-hot iron. His surgical instruments were a knife and a pair of pincers.
Yilderim, as it happened, chose to visit Sirdar Akbar a few minutes after he had cleaned the blood of Samir’s wound from his office floor. He looked up at the sound of the thunderous knock and wondered, as the communist engineer lurched into the room, whether Samir had been caught. In spite of his anxiety the old man could not help feeling a rush of anger at the sight of this drunken fool, his chief engineer, who knew nothing about anything, but held authority because he was a good Party man.
The former garage hand, with a bottle of vodka in his right hand, stumbled across to an armchair and slumped into it, fixing the old man with his bloodshot eyes.
‘Ex-Ambassador, former prince and general scum: khar-kuss-i-padar lanat …’ The obscene oaths died away into a mumble. He closed his eyes and broke wind noisily.
Yes, thought Sharifi, this is it. Had he found the gold or the dead man, or both?
He reached into his pocket and took out a pinch of snuff. He gave a thunderous sneeze, which brought Yilderim back to life.
‘I’m lonely, you old fool! It’s wrong for people to drink alone. Here, have a shot.’ He offered the bottle, but Sharifi shook his head.
‘All the more for me, then.’ Yilderim hiccupped, and looked at him morosely.
‘Come on, I only want to talk.’ Yilderim was looking at Sharifi anxiously, his mood changing under the influence of the drink. ‘Tell me something about your life. Yes, that’s what I want to hear. We might become friends, who knows?’
So, thought Sharifi, he doesn’t know anything about the gold – or the spy – yet. I might as well keep him occupied while Samir gets away. If I go on talking, perhaps he’ll drink himself into a stupor.
He blew his nose on a huge red bandanna handkerchief.
‘All right, Yilderim. I’ll tell you what I was thinking about.’
Yilderim nodded, grinning, and settled deeper into the easy chair.
‘As you know, there is always a holy fool who lives in the sacred place near here called the Chihil Zina, the Forty Steps. When one dies, another always appears to take his place. And I feel that it is nearly time to spend the rest of my life in contemplation.’
Yilderim made for the door. ‘Well, whatever you do, install the turbines first. I’m off to bed. This damned vodka isn’t what it used to be. Upsets my head and stomach.’
‘Samir is gone?’ Yilderim was sprawled on the couch of his luxurious studio apartment when Akbar made his report. His head was throbbing from the excesses of the night before. ‘Why should I care, Engineer? I don’t know how people can have feudal things like servants in a socialist country. Comrade Karmal will ban such exploitation as soon as he gets round to it. Let him go. People’s servants are always running away. He’s probably got into some trouble with the local villagers.’
‘But shouldn’t we report it?’
‘To whom and for what? The Revolution has far more important things to concern itself with than looking after former aristocrats’ lackeys. Tell you what, though.’
‘What?’
‘Since I can’t hold one or the other of the servants as a precaution against your desertion, from now on you’ll have to take a guard with you when you go out.’
‘Certainly, Chief Engineer. I only wanted to make sure that you had the report, that all was in order.’
Thank God. No police interest in Samir. So he would have a good chance of getting through: although he still wouldn’t know whether they were after him or not.
Quite a lot had happened since they had found the tunnel. Akbar had worked out that Amir Abdur-Rahman’s miners had missed the hoard by inches, and that it had only been revealed when a part of the inner wall, weakened by their burrowing, had fallen down. Akbar had installed electric light, and had even found a tunnel which passed close to his own office. Samir had made a secret entrance to it, so that it could be reached without going outside and making the long climb up the hill to the old mosque and then down the ste
ps to the treasure cave.
Akbar had coached Samir well in what he had to say to the prince – if he ever reached him – in Pakistan. It would need an experienced diplomat, with credentials and long-term planning, to deal with any modern chief of state. But to send a man to a traditional absolute monarch, or the son of one – people whom one knew on equal terms, and under such medieval circumstances as those prevailing in Afghanistan and Narabia – that was easy. And Samir was exactly the kind of man to do it, the faithful retainer, a type recognizable anywhere in the Middle East. It could not happen in the West, nowadays; Akbar smiled as he thought of it. But this was not the West.
In spite of his throbbing shoulder, Samir made excellent time on the sixty kilometres of road from Kandahar to Qala-i-Jadid on the Pakistan border. Plenty of trucks, driven by wild Pashtun tribesmen, ferried everything from machinery to tobacco along that route; the all-weather highway built by the Russians stopped there. Northwards, it ran nearly to the Soviet frontier, was suitable for the heaviest motor vehicles, including tanks. Even thirty years ago the neighbourly Soviet roadbuilders knew what they were doing, and why.
Samir slipped across the unmarked border into Baluchistan, and took the road for Quetta. From there he had no difficulty in getting a ride in a truck, all the way up to Peshawar.
There was no problem, either, in finding the Afghan camps. Three million refugees took up a lot of space. Samir soon found a small room in Peshawar, and settled down to await the coming of the prince.
Peshawar was more than a Pashtun city of twenty-five thousand houses; more than a frontier town; more than a place near which millions of Afghan refugees, accustomed to the cool mountains, sweltered in desert camps. Even when the British had ruled India and severed this area from Afghanistan, the town had been a listening-post for Russian spies. Now more than ever it was a centre of Soviet Intelligence. And here, before Prince Jamal’s visit, Samir was to meet one of the Kremlin’s most dangerous agents – and, innocently, to regard him as a friend.