There it was now, the honeysuckle. To the side. Yes. The shape of the huge drainage pipe, well over two metres in diameter, just up from the road, concreted into the rocks on the slope. Full of brushwood, nice and dry.
Into the pipe. Hunter turned hunted. He arranged the brushwood, at the mouth of the segment of pipe. Not too densely now: that might encourage someone to investigate. There were a lot of these pipes, set starkly into the hillside. Could they, would they, search them all? Sometimes, of course, they were full of scorpions. The Afghan black scorpion was the most deadly on earth. He shuddered. Still, this was the best idea that they had had when they had made their plan.
If a pursuit party came along this road and looked into the pipe, they’d have him for sure. With his teeth, the Mirza tore open a plastic bag and started to smear its fatty contents all over his clothes. There was no time to take them off. Then he applied the stuff, liberally, to his hands, face and head. Snow-leopard grease. For centuries the Pashtun tribesmen had used this when on a raid, to approach a house or pass through towns. Dogs were mortally afraid of the leopard smell, and would not go anywhere near it. In fact, when they got wind of it, they fell silent, probably prompted by some ancestral fear.
He must be less than seven hundred yards from Sementsev’s house now. On the main road, like every kind of a fool. But he had refused to make his way to where the colonel was waiting. If there was a house-to-house search, and that was possible even in this place of scattered dwellings, old Sakafi could well be compromised. It was the colonel who had thought of the leopard-grease, when he had reluctantly agreed to the Mirza’s hiding in the pipe.
Now he could hear the dogs, and smiled. They were on the right trail, but he guessed that it was most likely to be because whoever was in charge found it easier to hare down a surfaced road than to scramble across country, through parks and gardens, streams and lakes, in a prosperous suburb which was half a rocky wilderness, than for any other reason. He must be an old soldier, probably a senior sergeant. That was how they always thought. Still, he would also be doing some real hunting, even if only because there would be other men with him, who would observe his zeal or otherwise.
The dogs were getting closer, barking furiously as they ran; and men’s voices were mingled with them now.
It was strange how one thought, under stress. The barking now actually sounded to him like the words ‘come out, come out’. He remembered that someone was supposed to have said to a squirrel, ‘Why don’t you come out in the winter time?’ The squirrel had answered, ‘Look how they treat me in the summer, why should the winter be any better?’
Now they were very near, say about a hundred yards away. No, even nearer. There were the beams of their flashlights, actually probing through the loose brushwood of his shelter, getting in his eyes. Now there were tackety boots turning, slowing down. They were coming close to the drainpipe. He could hear voices, could make out their speech. Russian. He couldn’t understand a word. He kept absolutely still.
The dogs had started to whine, then fallen silent. Now the guards were cursing them, urging them on.
Maybe one of the men would come and check the pipe himself. Just room enough to aim this rifle from the hip, like a cowboy with a shotgun. Yes, that was it. He would take some of them with him. Nine rounds left, probably more than enough to go round. In the dark, though, he’d have to shoot at point-blank range: remember to aim just above, and to the right, of the flashlight’s bulb. For the heart. Of course, if the Russian had the light in his left hand …
No, they were going away. The sound of boots, receding down the road, the dogs barking again. Everything normal. Thank you, heroic and kindly snow-leopard. I’ll call my next son by your honoured name.
The time now? Just before three o’clock. Four hours to airport check-in. Could that lifetime have lasted for less than an hour? Colonel Sakafi would now be listening all the time.
He could call in now. The Mirza arranged the transmitting wire so that it was outside the pipe, with no obstacle between it and the Jasmine House, and connected the battery. ‘Is that you, my bulbul, my nightingale? This is your Majnun, pining for his Laila. Opportunity is dear, job done successfully, and time is a sword, I am well and holed up as arranged.’ He added, ‘As arranged, beautiful lady, six kisses at your boudoir window.’ The code for pick me up here at six in the morning.
There was nothing more that he could do. No way to get confirmation that the message had got through. The only thing now was to wait. It would be suicide for them to try to collect him during curfew, which didn’t end until 4.30 a.m., even without the hue and cry for the killer of the KGB man. Three hours to go. Funny how tired he felt: the adrenalin must all be used up. He packed up his things as neatly as he could by touch, and lay back instantly asleep.
The revving of a Land Rover engine woke him. It was backing off the road, its rear end coming towards the entrance to the pipe. As it touched the circular concrete rim, the Mirza tore the screen of brushwood away, and saw Colonel Sakafi, grinning from under the soft-top canopy. ‘Well done, warrior hero! Six in the morning. No Nikolais in sight.’
He was wide awake now, the bundle had been thrown into the back, the colonel was making room for him. Halim finished the imaginary task under the bonnet which had covered the embarkation, and they were off.
On the way to the airport the grease-ridden Pashtun became the Indian tourist again, taking his suit from the case which the colonel handed him.
There was a roadblock on the highway, but the tour agency car was waved right through by the bored trio of guards: one policeman, an Afghan corporal and a Russian private. None of them could read the Roman letters of the English text, or the Sanskrit of the Hindi on the Mirza’s Indian passport, anyway.
At the airport the Mirza described the events of the night. Nobody seemed to notice, at the entrance gate, that the guard-dogs tried to strain away from the residual whiff of snow-leopard still on the Mirza. Halim flashed his official card, and managed to get hold of a soldier to guard the Land Rover. The night before he had caught someone unscrewing the petrol cap, while in his other hand he had a packet of sugar, already opened. It was a complicated life, working for both sides.
The Mirza shook hands with his friends as the announcement called passengers to check-in for Flight IC 452.
‘What are you going to do with the gun, Colonel seb?’
‘Keep it, of course.’
‘Supposing they search the wagon on your way back to Kabul?’
‘They usually don’t search semi-official transport, except in curfew hours. But, in any case, I like to take a little risk now and then, it seems to keep one young.’
They embraced. ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’
‘You have honoured us.’
‘It was my duty.’
‘Safe journey.’
‘I entrust you to God.’
They might have been any ordinary people, seeing off a friend after a short and refreshing holiday, a midweek break.
There was unlikely to be any complication now. The Mirza checked in and picked up his hand baggage. Through passport control. Now the departure lounge. ‘Boarding please’ …Air India stewardesses in saris, smiling passengers. On the plane.
By two o’clock that afternoon, Mirza Ilyas Khan was going up the steps of the office building near Connaught Circus.
The chaprasi on duty at the door came to attention and saluted with that imitation of the British gesture which is still standard in independent India. Unlike the westernized office staff, who preferred to use English, he spoke in Urdu. ‘Apka mizaj?’
‘Thik, mehrbani. Well, thank you.’
‘Koi khabar? any news?’
‘Hech. None.’
As he walked past the open door to the room where the head of his department sat, ever-watchfully, he heard the familiar voice, and braced himself for the stilted officialese.
‘I am glad to see that you are back in station, Mr Khan. It is gratifyin
g to me that you are not late, also.’
The Mirza entered the room and bowed. The heat was stifling after Kabul, and the air-conditioner was still on the blink.
‘It is to be hoped that your family members are well now?’ The director smiled mechanically.
‘Yes, sir. Everything went well, and within the time which you so kindly allotted.’
When they had seen the Air India plane take off at Kabul, Colonel Sakafi and young Halim headed homewards.
The Land Rover stopped on the way, beside the grave of their kinsman, the Muhjahid Aslam Jan, and they got out.
The colonel slipped something from his pocket and pressed it into the still soft earth, in the midst of the flowers at the gravehead. It was a single, empty 7.62-millimetre brass cartridge case.
‘It is done, shahid, martyr, Aslam Jan,’ he said.
While the Mirza returned to his office nearly a thousand miles away, a messenger was shown into the cave where Adam sat, secure within the Paghman Mountains.
‘A verbal despatch, by relay runner, from Colonel Sakafi, in Kabul, Komondon Kara Kush.’ The man stepped forward, kissed Adam’s hand, and stood, with hand on heart.
‘Very well. Give the message.’
‘The message runs, “The execution of the murderer Sementsev, in retribution for the death of the Muhjahid Aslam Jan, took place this morning before dawn outside Kabul, in accordance with the traditional Law. Sentence was carried out by the warrior Mirza Ilyas Khan, of the Timur Clan.”’
BOOK 6
Daughter of Daniyel
The Afghans themselves proudly believed themselves to be of Israelite origin and their own historians, as men stating an established fact, refer to them as Ben-i-Israel – the Children of Israel …There were indeed a number of resemblances between Afghan customs and physical characteristics and those of the Jews, and certainly the Afghans displayed towards their foes a ferocity equal to anything to be found in the Old Testament.
Patrick Macrory: Signal Catastrophe – The Story of the
Disastrous Retreat from Kabul.
1 Prem Lal, KGB Rezident
Kabul
Afghanistan
JUNE 8
Karima had never heard of Prem Lal, and even if she had, she would not have recognized his car as it passed her on the road to Shahr-i-Nau, the New Town, as she was starting her life as a guerrilla. And Prem Lal, for that matter, did not even notice the plodding, veiled figure heading for the bus station. If she had known that he was the chief of an important section of the Afghan political police, she would have paid the little Russian Zaprozhets car more attention. If he, on the other hand, had had any inkling that the old woman was carrying some of the most important documents in the country in her bag, he would have abandoned his plans for the evening there and then. As it was, each figure continued towards its destiny.
Prem Lal, although an Afghan intelligence man, had been Russia’s Secret KGB Resident in Kabul for nearly thirty years. It was through him that Babrak Karmal, who then had had only about five or six supporters, had found his way to power. Lal had shown that he could muster hundreds of collaborators, many in key positions, when the time came for the Russians to rush Karmal out of his East European cold storage after the earlier Red coups had collapsed. Prem Lal had spent lavishly from his Russian money, to build up a network of agents and to convert disaffected people to communism – or what they thought was communism – in those three decades.
The Afghans in general were supposed not to be fond of Hindus, but Prem Lal’s father had nurtured the hope of high office for his son. Hindus, in spite of what people said, had risen to high office in Kabul: Chaman Lal (no relation) was actually head of the national bank and was said to control far more than the country’s finances. Young Prem was brought up to aim high, though the family was poor. By the time he was eighteen years old, something happened which convinced him that he was destined for great things.
It was at the beginning of 1941, and a sidelight of world history was touching Afghanistan: something which might have ended with Prem Lal attaining high office.
Britain was at war with Germany and Afghanistan was neutral. Prem Lal’s father came home from his evening job as a clerk at the German Legation accompanied by an Indian, a Bengali, who was introduced as ‘a family friend’.
The friend was none other than Netaji – Great Leader – Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist who had escaped from Calcutta, where he had been under house arrest. His aim was to reach Berlin and to work from there, rousing the people of India against British rule. Those were the days of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and Bose was waiting for permission to travel through the USSR to Germany.
The journey took some time to arrange. In the meantime Bose, a man of charismatic personality, fired young Prem with tales of heroism and India’s fight for independence. Before he left the Lal household, Bose advised Prem Lal to leave the backwater of Kabul, to go to Bengal, where Bose would meet him one day, and would be glad to have him as a henchman.
In April, as the snows were melting, word reached Kabul that Subhas Chandra Bose had arrived safely in the German capital via Moscow. Hitler had even given him an inscribed cigarette case. Prem Lal took leave of his family and made his way to India, to Bose’s home province of Bengal, working underground. It was there that he joined the communists.
Two years later, Prem Lal was chief of Nationalist Intelligence in Calcutta when the thrilling news came. The Leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, had arrived, by German submarine, back in Asia, and reached the Japanese-occupied area of Burma. He was now Commander-in-Chief of the INA, the Indian National Army, composed of 45,000 former British Indian Army fighting men captured at Singapore. Lal’s message from Bose included these words: ‘I have not forgotten you, Prem Lal. Prepare yourself for power!’ Heady stuff for a twenty year old. Within a few months, Prem Lal was sure, the Indian Nationalist and Japanese armies would sweep through Bengal, adding India to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Prem Lal would be Minister of Internal Security, of the Republic of India …
The Indians had Imphal surrounded: it was due to fall in less than a day. Then fate stepped in once more. Suddenly the monsoon broke, the Japanese air force was grounded, the British brought up more armies, Bose fled to Saigon, then to Taiwan, where his aircraft crashed and he was killed.
Prem Lal found Calcutta suddenly too hot for him: someone had betrayed the Movement, and he escaped to Kabul with the British-Indian Criminal Investigation Department at his heels. They did not know his real identity, however, and he then returned to India to work for communism for six dreary years. He came to realize that there was no hope for communism in Nehru’s independent India, and said so to the KGB Rezident in the Soviet Embassy in New Delhi. This man, after consulting Moscow, had Prem Lal groomed for work in Afghanistan.
By 1952 Prem Lal was back in Kabul, with excellent, if forged, certificates showing that he had not wasted his time away from his homeland. He had been recruited by the Russians as a mole and trained, first in Moscow by Section Ten of the KGB, and then in Prague, where he had done his field-training. The documents which he was able to display to the Afghan authorities, however, ‘proved’ that he had been awarded the BA degree of a small Indian university, followed by a scholarship in police work to an Austrian institute of higher education. Moscow, naturally, made sure that the documentation looked right. They knew that all certificates offered by candidates for employment in government offices in Afghanistan went to the Kabul Foreign Ministry for verification.
The officer there who was responsible for confirming qualifications was on the Soviet payroll. His job was to contact the Afghan embassy nearest to where any educational certificate originated, to check it. Instead, he passed Prem Lal’s ‘qualifications’ to the Soviet Embassy who, already briefed, sent them on to Moscow. Once at number two, Dzerzhinsky Square, Moscow (better known as the Lubianka, from the name of the prison in the same building), the papers were soon at the Third Special Secti
on, responsible for all KGB illegal documentation. Within two weeks they were returned to Kabul, via the USSR Embassy, accompanied by the necessary certification, apparently stamped on them by the appropriate Afghan consular officials in India and Europe, testifying to their genuineness.
Prem Lal was given a job in Kabul police international intelligence. This involved hardly any work at all: Afghanistan was a backwater. And the Hindu was aware that he would never rise much higher under King Zahir Shah. But as the KGB man in Kabul, well, that might well come to something in the years ahead. After all, he was only thirty years old.
The communization of Afghanistan at that time was not one of the Kremlin’s priorities, however important it may have seemed to Prem Lal. But, obeying his instructions to the letter, he spent the next decades doggedly finding mail drops, converting dissident students and idealists, who opposed the favouritism which they felt had invaded every aspect of official life and employment, and choosing likely candidates for leadership of the Afghan Communist Party. Because communism, in Afghanistan, meant totalitarian Russia, the party was called, instead, the People’s Democratic Party.
This Party must have been the slowest-growing one in history. For no less than twenty years it had only six members. By the time Prem Lal was fifty, there were at the most three hundred. These were split into two factions: the ‘Flag’ Parcham, who were mainly Persian-speakers, and the ‘People’ Khalq, who used the other national language, Pashtu. Since Prem Lal was of Indian origin, neither a Tajik nor a Pashtun, both coteries looked on him with suspicion and disdain: but he held the purse strings, and much Moscow money flowed through his hands to the leaders of both groups.