Kara Kush

  It was well greased, and there were five ten-round magazines with it. ‘Fifty shots, 7.62-millimetres long,’ he said, counting them.

  ‘That’s right. Isn’t it enough?’

  ‘Plenty. However did you get hold of it?’

  ‘The Russians are corrupt as all hell,’ said the colonel. ‘Believe it or not, this gun was sold to someone I know by a Nikolai officer who offered it for foreign currency. It cost us $500. On the frontier it would fetch $5000 from a Pashtun chief.’

  ‘Foreign currency buys comfort in the USSR,’ said the Mirza. He was cleaning off the storage grease.

  ‘But guns buy death in occupied countries,’ said Colonel Sakafi, ‘just look at that telescopic sight. High-precision. That’s why it’s called a snayperskaya, sniping, rifle, by the Russians.’

  ‘You know a lot about it.’ The Mirza was interested.

  ‘I have always liked guns. After all, I’m an old infantryman. You cavalry people are always lurching about: how can you take aim from a horse’s back? You don’t really know what shooting is.’

  ‘I can shoot all right,’ said the Mirza, ‘although I admit I learned most of it on the range and tiger hunting. But give me some more details. I don’t know these guns at all.’

  ‘Right. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Ammunition? Range?’

  ‘Special ammunition for maximum accuracy. Accurate to about 1300 metres. The weight is about four and a half kilograms, or ten pounds to you Anglo-Saxons.’

  ‘Anglo-Saxon trained, if you don’t mind. What’s the muzzle velocity?’

  ‘Of the order of eight hundred metres a second: say about 2600 feet per second. Better than the Kalashnikov, and equal to most heavy machine-guns.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said the Mirza.

  They discussed transport. ‘What’s the most unobtrusive vehicle we can get for a short field-survey?’ Mirza TimurKhel was not well up on Kabul conditions under the Russians.

  ‘A motorcycle. The Nikolais hardly ever stop and check people on them.’

  ‘Can we get hold of one?’

  ‘Yes, we’ll call in Halim. He lives just down the road.’

  ‘Can we trust him?’

  ‘Completely. We have worked together before.’

  While they sat drinking green tea with ground cardamoms, Anis, the houseboy, slipped out of the house to call the man with the transport.

  It was a large, gleaming BMW, the R65 model, brought by a grinning youth with the ‘European’, red-haired, freckle-faced looks which have always surprised foreigners who imagined that all Afghans are swarthy. He worked for Afghan Tour, the semi-official Kabul agency which once organized sightseeing trips around the country.

  ‘Halim’s seen Sementsev several times,’ the colonel said, ‘so he can tell you what he looks like.’

  The Mirza questioned Halim.

  ‘Well, he looks very ordinary. Just like a Russian. Medium height, I suppose. I’ve only seen him sitting down, in cars and restaurants.’

  ‘Halim Jan, can’t I get just a look at him, somehow? Or see a photograph?’

  ‘No, Mirza seb, there’s no hope of that. These people always rush from one place to another, never lingering anywhere. You never get a good look at them. You could only see him at the office, and that’s too dangerous. Otherwise, he’ll be at the house or at one of the prisons or interrogation-centres.’

  ‘Could you do me a sketch – or do all Russians look alike to you?’

  Halim tried. It wasn’t very successful. ‘It’s not that they look alike. It’s just that this man is so ordinary. Like a man behind a desk, a minor official, quiet. Doesn’t shout or wave his arms, or anything. I’m sorry, Mirza.’

  ‘It’s all right, Halim. He’s a KGB colonel; does he wear uniform?’

  ‘No: none of them do, except on special or social occasions.’

  ‘No limp, spectacles, broken nose, bald head or anything?’

  ‘No. He must be about forty, and he has a Slav face: you know, blue eyes and high cheekbones. A lot of them look like that.’

  That would have to do.

  They had a meal, and then the Mirza, with Colonel Sakafi riding pillion on the big motorcycle rode out along the excellent highway to look at Sementsev’s house. They cruised around, the huge machine burbling beneath them, noting trees, wells, culverts and the like.

  They went to pay their respects at the grave of Aslam Jan. The Mirza placed a token handful of earth upon it, and made his pledge of requital.

  Just before the sunset curfew, they rode back into the city. Nobody had taken any interest in them. This, they agreed, may have been because almost everyone riding a motorcycle these days, especially a powerful one, was an official or in the police.

  The Mirza worked with the rifle, cleaning and getting to know it, even speaking to it. It had been well protected, wrapped in oiled cloth and the barrel plugged. Its box had been part-filled with sawdust to absorb moisture. The colonel had packed the ammunition in silica gel, guarding against condensation, the worst enemy of the rifleman. The Mirza field-stripped the weapon with the greatest care, studying the mechanism and the electrics of the sight. After admiring again the scooped-out butt, which so effectively reduced its weight, he placed the gun in a secret hiding-place under the floorboards of the study, had a light meal of tea, bread and soup, and went to bed.

  He had decided not to take the rifle outside to try any ranging shots, to get his eye in. Someone might hear. Besides, trying to kill with a gun he’d never shot with was Mirza the hunter’s way of giving the Russian just a little better chance.

  *

  Thursday morning was clear and slightly sharp at first, with very little wind. As the sun rose, the Afghan Tour Land Rover, a long wheelbase model with a soft top, driven by Halim, arrived at the house to collect the colonel and the tourist from Delhi for a sightseeing trip. They drove around, scouting, looking again at the lie of the land, for two hours, and breakfasted in a wood six miles from the city. They slowly formed their plan, going over the arrangements again and again in the greatest possible detail.

  When the Land Rover next appeared on the road where the KGB chief’s house was situated, the business-suited tourist was no longer to be seen. Mirza, sitting beside the driver, now wore the garb of a Pashtun hillman; voluminous shirt, baggy trousers, turban wound over a conical skullcap.

  Eight hundred yards from the target, Halim stopped the vehicle and the Mirza, thanking him volubly in rustic Pashtu for the lift, took his sacking-covered bundle from the back and started to walk along the road. Halim accelerated away with a wave and a shouted ‘Happy hunting!’ A massive Pashtun tribesman, somewhat down on his luck and therefore having to work for effete Kabulis, bearing a heavy pack with his tools in it, was the most natural sight in the world to those who passed him as he trudged along.

  The houses, standing for the most part among trees, were each of two or three storeys, built in late Victorian style in the 1900s. Each was surrounded by a wall and usually guarded by a night watchman. There were many trees thereabouts, and the Mirza, during his reconnaissance, had marked down the perfect one for his purposes. It was a massive mulberry, with just the right kind of branches for a machan, the hide which he or his shikari had prepared in north India so many times in the past. Sitting in such a tree, with a goat tethered in the killing-zone, the hunter waited until the tiger, on the prowl, came for the captive animal. When he had killed and was eating the goat, one shot could be quite enough.

  The mulberry stood alone, but in such a position that, by climbing upon an orchard boundary wall, he could reach its lower branches without being seen from any angle. How useful that Afghans had walled orchards, far from any house.

  It was more difficult to climb, the trunk was smoother, and the bundle with the rifle heavier, than he had thought. He was also less agile than he used to be. A man of fifty in the Afghan glens is usually still very active, but in the softer life of Delhi one tends to put on weight.

&n
bsp; Now he was up. As he had guessed, the tree afforded perfect cover and a clear line of sight to the house he wanted, which must be – he squinted at the first storey, level with his seat – must be about 650 yards away. There was no wind.

  He unwrapped the bundle and took out the rifle, a hammer, a large nail and a magazine, already charged with ten 7.62-millimetre shells. At this range, a bullet would take under a second to cover the distance to the target. He would be firing at only half the maximum effective range of the gun, so its accuracy would be that much greater.

  He hammered the nail into the branch at his side, and hung the sackcloth from it. He snapped the magazine in and felt the gun assume the configuration and balance which had been designed into it.

  Using the knurled wheel of the sight, he brought the front door of the house into focus and read off the scale – exactly six hundred metres. Six hundred metres is six hundred and fifty yards. Good guess.

  He set the range into the elevation knob, and squinted at his target, using the point of the top chevron as his aiming point. The horizontal scale was obviously for wind correction. There was no wind at the moment: but if one sprang up later, he might need more than one shot. On the other hand, at this relatively close range, the wind might not matter. He’d know when the time came.

  The Mirza was a good enough shot to drill a hole in the centre of an object two and a half inches by three and a half, at this range: and that was precisely what he was proposing to do. The size of a man’s forehead.

  He looked at his watch. Eight-forty a.m. Sementsev might have left the house by now for his office in the city. If he were still at home, he would probably leave soon, and this would not allow much time to kill him and make the final arrangements for his escape. If he could get to his chosen hideout in broad daylight. That would be very dangerous indeed, but the Mirza, thinking of Aslam Jan hanged from a tree, was not concerned about that. The main thing would be to keep young Halim and the colonel out of trouble. If the Mirza himself died – well, he’d had most of his life anyway.

  Now for the house itself. He had done well to choose this tree and not to try to get any nearer. The place was surrounded by barbed wire. He could see the drive and the front of the house, and there were at least two, no, three sentry-boxes and a dog patrol. There were signs that a metal-girder tower was being built, and what looked like parts for an observation platform, and a demounted searchlight, lay on the ground beside it. Tools and sandbags, too: they were about to turn the place into a fortress. He was too far away for the dogs to be a problem; after all, there must be plenty of other people passing within this distance of the house, and the animals must be trained to disregard them. The dogs were German shepherds, really vicious-looking ones. Their handlers were Russians, in grey fur caps, Kalashnikovs slung across their backs.

  There was no radio mast on the roof, but twin telephone wires ran on poles from above the porch towards the main road. Presumably they joined the ground cable at that point.

  So far, it was obvious, the place had not been proofed against long-distance attack, against shelling, mortars or a sniper. There were bars, but no sandbags and probably no toughened glass, in the windows. They had just rigged up a defence against a fairly weak frontal attack. Quite enough during the first months of the occupation, of course, since most of the active snipers of Afghanistan were to be found in the south, towards, or on, the Pakistan frontier. Anyway, few of them had precision rifles effective over really long distances. Perhaps later, thought the Mirza, they will wake up and cut down this mulberry. But that would be helpful, one hoped, only to Sementsev’s replacement.

  Still no signs of Sementsev. The garage doors were shut; no car was visible. Did transport call for Sementsev, or did he drive himself? Anyway, it was time to check the other line of sight.

  Over to his right, just under a kilometre away, was the second house. It was higher, standing on a mound, and it had three storeys with large windows. On the long, flat roof, too thin for him to see at this distance, there was a very long washing-line. He could see its white-painted poles.

  The Mirza took out a matchbox and opened it. He unwound a long, thin wire attached to a tiny instrument, a mass of fine, soldered wires and transistors mounted on a scrap of circuit-board, with a built-in miniature microphone: a matchbox-sized VHF/FM transmitter, powered by a nine-volt battery. The wire was the transmitting antenna, and the range was 1,218 metres. The washing-line was – he measured the posts with the range-finder – 900 metres away. Excellent. The module was preset for sending on 100 megaherz, in the VHF band. It could be heard on any ordinary VHF receiver, the kind that thousands of people had, even in Kabul. It could also be picked up, of course, in the Sementsev house: if anyone was listening on 100 megaherz. But that would hardly matter, even if they were. Very short transmissions, under three minutes in duration, couldn’t be located, so let Sementsev hear if he liked …

  He placed the wire carefully, so that there was no tree, no building between it and the house with the washing-line. What was the time? Just coming up to nine o’clock. He was to check in every hour, on the hour.

  At a few seconds to nine, the Mirza connected the battery to the tiny set to activate it and started to speak. ‘No report. Show now if receiving.’ This was short, and equivocal enough. Someone who just happened to be receiving on 100 megaherz at that moment might miss it, or would assume that it was a military or test transmission.

  He disconnected the battery and looked towards the washing-line. It was fluttering with white sheets. Colonel Sakafi had heard, knew that the hunter had reached his machan, and had nothing to report. Communications were working perfectly.

  The Mirza stowed the radio back in the pocket of his Pashtun shirt and looked towards the KGB man’s house again. Still no movement. The tiny set which the Mirza carried had been brought back from London, two years ago, by a student, who had bought it for amusement. He had soon tired of the little toy, and it had quickly found its way to the Resistance when the Russians banned all non-official transmissions and equipment in the country. It had only cost four pounds in England, and it ran for sixty-five hours on a battery, the colonel had said.

  It was a perfect shooting day: calm and quiet, crisp and clear. But where was Sementsev?

  Mirza tried to visualize his prey: Russian, forty, ‘ordinary’. Not exactly a classical villain. Perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t have a grotesque description to contend with. This was, after all, to be an execution. But if he’d seen him, there would be less chance of killing the wrong man.

  Now that was where a tiger-shoot was easier than a manhunt. When the tiger arrived, you knew your target. You didn’t shoot a jackal which happened to be prowling around, instead. And, of course, you had the goat. But where was the goat in this case?

  The question turned around in his head. Find the goat to Sementsev’s tiger. If he could solve that one, there need be no mistake.

  Put it into the back of your mind, Mirza told himself, and let your brain solve it. He took out some food: white cheese, bread and walnuts, pickles and a gulp of water from his flask. Hunting sharpened the appetite.

  Colonel Sakafi sat by the washing-line on the flat roof of his old army comrade’s house, waiting for the signal. He had the keys to the building, and it was so well protected, with iron bars and shutters, that Jasmine House needed no watchman. The colonel went in, from time to time, to see that all was well. Akram, who owned it, was always in Jalalabad at this time of year, where he had relatives and business interests. It was warmer, more comfortable down there. Akram had said, ‘Use the place for whatever you will, my dear brother, a man cannot be in two houses at once: “the opportunity is dear”, as the saying goes, “and time is a sword”.’ This proverb, therefore, had been chosen as the basis of the code which the Mirza would use to signal when he was to be picked up.

  The place they had already arranged: a large, single-segment drainage pipe positioned by the main road, dry at this time of the year. Th
e pipe was intended to carry the runoff from the slope above it to prevent the carriageway becoming a river when it rained.

  If the Mirza finished the present matter quickly, he would have to be picked up soon after, and at great risk.

  If he had to wait until darkness, or even stay all night at his post, he would have to be collected in time to catch the plane to Delhi which left Kabul Airport at 9.25 the next morning.

  Twenty-four hours left, as of now …

  Colonel Sementsev sat in his office and looked at the transistorized clock on the wall opposite. Nine a.m. He had left the house early that morning to look in at the prison, to see how the stukachis were getting on. These were the paid KGB informers, some of them prisoners, some guards and the rest officials, who provided him with a useful stream of information. He was an expert in this field, and also in planting agents provocateurs, an ancient KGB tradition. He had suggested to the Moscow people, when that old fool General Kishniyev was repatriated, that he might be put in a ward full of stukachis in the mental hospital. The result? Kishniyev had named, in conversation, several Red Army officers of high rank. They were ‘sick of the brutality of the occupation forces in Afghanistan’, as he had put it: in typical bourgeois capitalist jargon, of course.

  Sementsev had been commended by the Comrade Chairman personally. Well, in a letter of course. That was pretty well the same thing as seeing him personally. ‘Outstanding zeal in defence of socialism’. What melodious words. It could mean promotion.

  There were things to attend to. He lifted the handset and telephoned his wife.

  ‘Natalia. Is everything in order?’

  Natalia Sementseva was breathless with excitement.

  ‘Everything is fine, Vassily. All the food is in, all the drink; and the music is arranged.’

  ‘Excellent. And everyone is coming?’

  ‘Yes, everyone who is anyone. I am so excited.’

  ‘Well, Natalia, just to confirm. I make it thirty officers of the administration – that is, rather, the fraternal advisory groups helping the Afghan Government. Some of them are high-ranking apparatchiki, permanent Party officials, you know.’