Kara Kush

  Within ten minutes the entire group of captives, some fifty people, was scrambling up a rock face, guided by the Muhjahidin who had been trained for this phase of the operation. Both the hostages and the Whirlwind attack force had reached safety before, at last, the helicopters came overhead.

  ‘Not a scratch on anyone,’ said The Eagle, as they celebrated their victory. ‘It was as good as one of those raids right into Kabul City, the time we blew up the gas tanks and got clean away. If you rememeber, not only did we not lose anyone, but several people joined us, right off the streets.’

  He hugely enjoyed telling his men, most of whom had been kept in ignorance for security’s sake, how he and a small group, instructed by Captain Azambai, had doctored the mortar shells in the parked truck, and simply left them for the Russians to collect.

  ‘If the Nikolais had still been eating my bread, instead of that unhealthy baked brown leather of theirs, their brains would not have been so addled as to fall for your ruse, tampering with their mortar bomb fuses. Anyway, that kind of fiddling can be dangerous. We could all have been blown up.’ The baker grinned.

  The Eagle laughed. ‘Nanpaz, you are a better baker than you are a linguist. You didn’t know, did you, that the Russian word miny means “mortar bomb” as well as “mine”. It means that, though we didn’t get any mines, we did get, thanks to you, the little amusement we’ve just had.’

  ‘Thank you, Eagle.’ The baker had had his recognition at last. ‘After all, they do say, “A ruse is worth a tribe”.’

  ‘Long live the Revolution!’ said the butcher.

  ‘Shame on the killers!’ said the baker.

  ‘Hurrah for Victory!’ said The Eagle.

  After the baker had had his share of glory, The Eagle let the Muhjahidin into the secret he had held back thus far. They cheered Captain Azambai to the echo when they discovered that it was his radio which had eavesdropped, on the castle’s special frequency, revealing that all the mortars had been linked, electronically, to fire at the same time. They insisted on Captain Azambai teaching them the word for it, which they sometimes called him by, as a title: ‘Radiovoyna’ – electronic warfare.

  BOOK 8

  Nest of the Eagle

  As to fanaticism, well, if we in England found a foreign army, for no reason that we knew of, invading our country and blowing up our homes and public buildings, etc., I fancy we would do our best to wipe them out, and call ourselves patriots, not fanatics.

  George B. Scott

  Afghan and Pathan

  1 One hundred and fifty-eight – and volunteering

  Eagle’s Nest

  The Buddhist Monastery

  Paghman Mountains

  JUNE 19

  Colonel Slavsky’s abrupt treatment of Helicopter Ground Support meant that General Zeitsev had taken his pilots off standby. It was some time before the scouters came over the Paghman foothills looking for the Kara Kush band, Battle Group Whirlwind. By that time, three hours after the mortar explosions, the freed hostages – and some booty – were safe in the ancient monastery’s tunnels.

  A few of the hostages were suffering from malnutrition, some were half-blind from being kept in the dark: for weeks in some cases; but there were no serious cases of sickness.

  Adam Durany called Qasim into his ‘orderly room’.

  ‘The Russians had all those people ready for deportation. They won’t, therefore, have planted spies among them to collect our secrets. But we’ve got to weed out any agents who have been trying to collect information from the real hostages. As soon as everyone has rested, we’ll set up an interrogation system to deal with this problem.’

  Whilst they were discussing the details of this necessity, three armoured personnel-carriers manned by Afghan regular troops had drawn up at the Russian roadblock on the Kabul-Paghman highway, twenty miles south of the Caves.

  The men at the roadblock had seen the castle, three miles south of them, under threat, and heard the firing and explosions when the mortars went up. They had not been informed about the action, however. As far as they were concerned, it was just another Muhjahid raid, beaten back, probably with the usual high casualty list for the Afghans. None of their business, anyway. Most of them just wanted to get back to the Soviet Union and safety.

  Several tanks were dug in by the roadside, hull-down, commanding the road with their heavy guns and automatic weapons. An Afghan Army captain sat at a table in the middle of the road. A Russian officer, the two small stars and narrow red stripe of a second lieutenant on his khaki shoulder-straps, sat smoking on a deck chair beside him.

  Stoi! – Halt. Two Russian privates trained their weapons on the cars, pointing to the red and yellow Traffic Control board by the roadside. From the leading personnel-carrier an Afghan colonel jumped down and, accompanied by two NCOs carrying the latest model Kalashnikov 74s, strode up to the captain, as the Russian guards presented arms.

  ‘Where are your papers? You cannot proceed without orders from the High Command. Paghman is full of bandits, didn’t you know that, colonel? You’d never get ten kilometres, not with those cars and only thirty men. Show me your movement order.’ The captain held out his hand for documents.

  The colonel looked at him coolly. ‘First, stand up when you speak to me, unfortunate one! Have you forgotten how to salute?’

  The captain struggled to his feet, red-faced and apologizing.

  ‘Excuse me. I am only an administrative officer …’

  ‘How long have you been in the Army?’

  The captain looked uneasy. ‘Two months.’

  ‘Why are you in the Army?’

  The man appeared to consider this for a moment. ‘To serve my country. To safeguard the April Revolution.’

  ‘Ever heard the word “sir”?’

  ‘Forgive me, sir.’

  ‘Captain: I am on my way to Paghman, and so are these men with me. My movement order is in the guns of my men. We have work to do there. If you don’t give us passage we’ll do the work here – by blasting a way through you and your Russian dog-friend here.’

  The captain, instead of being frightened or annoyed, snapped to attention and saluted. ‘Colonel seb! You have the very best of movement orders. I don’t need paper or lead bullets. All I need is to know that someone is still prepared to fight. That is what we call Afghaniyyat, “Afghanness”.

  ‘Just pretend to show me papers and I’ll let you through. These Russians don’t understand a word of what we’re saying.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain. You seem a very patriotic man for someone who is taking orders from enemies. What’s the explanation?’

  ‘Colonel seb: I am only a clerk from the Ministry of Economy. I was forced into the Army, but I still have a sense of honour.’

  The colonel shook his hand. ‘Captain, you are one of our very own!’

  The captain signalled to his men to lift the striped red and yellow road barrier. Before the cars moved forward he walked to the door of the first one where the colonel sat, opened it and bent down. Then he kissed the instep of the colonel’s boot.

  ‘Kill some Russians for me,’ he said, ‘my family have been taken hostage.’

  The colonel saluted him. ‘By my head and eyes, brother,’ he said.

  Half an hour later, scouts reported to The Eagle that three of the latest Soviet armoured personnel-carriers, BTR-70s, were making their way towards the guerrilla stronghold. One of the advance picquets had noted that they were flying the old flag of Afghanistan, the vertical black-red-green tricolour, and not the socialist emblem.

  A group of wild-looking hillmen signalled to the vehicles to stop. Everything, from primitive matchlocks and ancient Martini-Henry rifles, real museum pieces, to new Russian Kalashnikovs and shotguns, were levelled at the newcomers.

  The commander, Colonal Barakzai, clambered out of the lead car, and held up his right hand in greeting. Uruzgani, a wizened warrior with a rocket-launcher over his shoulder, who was known as Tonkkhor, the Tank-Eater, moved
towards him, levelling his weapon. At that range, two or three yards, it was extremely dangerous.

  The colonel shouted: ‘Peace! Tell your leader that Colonel Akram Barakzai, Thirty-Seventh Commando Division, is here, with vehicles and thirty men. To join the fight.’

  As the APCs were being hidden under piles of brushwood, Adam went down to the cliff face to welcome the newcomers. ‘This is the first regular army unit we’ve had come over to us, so you are doubly welcome,’ he told the colonel. ‘How did you find us?’

  Barakzai smiled. ‘It’s quite a story, but, as you’ll see, there’s no security problem.

  ‘I was dining with old Colonel Sakafi a few weeks ago, and telling him that I had about three dozen men ready to take to the mountains, but that I wondered how to contact a suitable guerrilla group. Sakafi said, at once, “You must go to The Eagle, Kara Kush: but plan your move well. Get all your families to safety first: then act swiftly. Use effrontery!”

  ‘I asked him, “Where exactly could I find him, though?”

  ‘He said, “Years and years ago, when I was hunting in the Paghman Mountains, way beyond the valley, I saw a young fellow who’d fixed himself up with a cave in an old Buddhist monastery. I tracked him, just for fun: I’m an old hunter as well as a warrior, you know. Well, that fellow is Adam Durany, Sirdar Akbar Sharifi’s friend. I know them both well. And the caves – I’ll draw you a map.”’

  Everyone laughed. Adam said, ‘But how did he know that I was The Eagle?’

  ‘I asked him that,’ said Colonel Barakzai. ‘He said, “He may be a fine engineer, but I’ve been in military intelligence as well as in a fighting unit. When The Eagle sent me a note asking me to inform the Mirza in Delhi that young Aslam Jan had been murdered by a KGB man called Sementsev, I read it very carefully. First, I recognized the classical quotation he used: it was one of Adam’s favourites. Second, I remembered that I knew the Mirza and that he was Aslam’s only relative.”’

  ‘Just as well the Russians haven’t got you on their side,’ said Adam. ‘Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people know how to get in touch with us, but only through a long line of intermediaries. Very few can get here without going through the sieve.’

  The colonel leant back in his chair. ‘Yes, the strength of the Afghans is that they are at last getting security-minded. So many people have to stay in their jobs because there isn’t anything else for them to do. If they take to the mountains, their families suffer. If they don’t, they can always do their bit by helping the Resistance. Even under the occupation, this gives some spice to life.’

  ‘Colonel, I am working on two main concepts,’ Adam said. ‘The first is that we must have a lot of exploits, punishing the Russians and showing that everyone can do something, that even a small force can hurt.’

  ‘Yes, Adam: keep up morale and hit the enemy; excellent military principles.’

  ‘But we have to do more, you know …’

  ‘Organize, unify, prepare to drive the invader out!’ The colonel’s eyes were blazing, his Pashtun blood stirred.

  Adam laid a hand on his arm. ‘Yes, all that, but we have to do it the Afghan way: use the character of the people and the nature of the terrain and our history. At the moment, everyone is fighting his own war, large and small bands scattered through the whole country. If we form large armies, the Russians will wipe them out, or else they will not be able to operate in rugged terrain without being destroyed from the air. Small bands, guerrilla actions. And the key to success here is in two principles: information and co-operation.’

  ‘I agree with everything you say,’ the colonel said. ‘We can get high-grade information from the KHAD, the secret police, even. But do you get co-operation from other bands?’

  ‘Yes we do, colonel. In fact, only last week we were attacking a Russian transport section when another group approached and helped us out. There was only one problem there.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘They wanted to do it by themselves! You see, for the size of the convoy, either of us could have dealt with it. We’d both got the same tip-off from the Afghan logistics people. Duplication of effort.’

  ‘Adam, what you need is centralized information, not centralized command. Then you can share the operations out.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I think I can help you there. If you like I’ll work out a plan for Pan-Afghan intelligence and operational liaison.’

  ‘That’s just what we need. And, in the meantime, let’s start with the problem which Qasim and I were puzzling over when you arrived. You can help us there, too.’

  ‘Glad to. What is it?’

  ‘Screening the hostages, to sift out any informers among them. The prisoners we’ve just rescued from Slavsky’s castle. And you can train one of my men in interrogation methods: Qasim would be good.’

  The colonel was pleased. ‘Great, Adam. Soon as you like.’

  ‘Fine. Have some food and then you and Qasim can begin. We haven’t had time to check the hostages at all, except to see whether anyone is injured or ill.’

  Half an hour later the interrogation began.

  Qasim watched as the first batch – all men who were volunteering to join the Muhjahidin – were brought in, one by one. It seemed to him that the colonel’s methods were altogether too gentle. He had expected interrogation to involve, well, bullying at least.

  But Colonel Barakzai had told him, ‘Simply observe and learn.’

  A beefy, beetle-browed man in his early thirties, well-developed physically, with an intelligent face, stepped forward.

  ‘Abdullah Wardaki, from Kabul Province.’

  ‘Welcome, Mr Wardaki. You look as though you have seen some military service. You hold yourself well.’

  ‘I have been an officer in the Kabul Fire Brigade.’

  ‘Excellent! For long, and how recently?’

  ‘For five years, and until three months ago.’

  ‘That must be very interesting. How many of the new fire engines have you got there?’

  ‘Nine, sir.’

  ‘I heard that you had three of the large water tankers, too.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where is the Central Fire Station in Kabul, again?’

  ‘In the compound of Kabul Police Headquarters.’

  ‘Did you find that it was easier to deal with fires quickly, after automatic telephone dialling came in?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very much easier.’

  ‘I thought so. There was a fire near my house, in the Mikro-rayon block, the modern one, at Nadir Shah Maina, you know. The people there were nearly all foreigners, so they didn’t know what to do. I found a distraught woman at my door, saying, “My apartment is in flames! What number do I dial to phone the fire brigade?” Of course, I was able to tell her it was 777, and your people were there in no time at all. Do you remember that fire? It was about two years ago, people called Martin, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, I think I do. I am not quite sure, though. What time of the year was it?’

  ‘Autumn.’

  ‘I may have been on leave then. I went to Europe for training.’

  ‘Eastern Europe?’

  ‘Yes. Hungary. Terrible place. Communist persecution; tyranny everywhere.’

  The colonel smiled, and continued in his conversational tone. ‘Well, Mr Wardaki, we have your particulars. Please step outside and I’ll make arrangements for you.’

  The man bowed, and went out of the room. Colonel Barakzai looked at Qasim. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. He sounds all right.’

  ‘Qasim, you haven’t done any intelligence work, have you? What’s your background?’

  ‘University of Wyoming, through its programme with the Afghan Institute of Technology, Kabul, sir.’

  ‘I see. Well, listen. The Central Fire Station is in the middle of Kabul, near the Ministry of Mines. Did you know that?’

  ‘No, I thought it was where he said it was.’

  ‘So
do lots of other people: but not firemen. It was moved from Police HQ some time ago.’

  ‘So he’s a phony?’

  ‘Let’s say for the moment that he’s not a fireman. He thinks you dial 777 for “Fire!”, but it’s actually 13.’

  ‘Did he get anything right at all?’

  ‘The number of new fire engines, and that’s all. He agreed that they had three new water tankers. Actually they have four.’

  Qasim scratched his head. ‘But if he is a plant, why didn’t they train him better?’

  ‘Because, my dear friend, you can fill a man full of facts to make him seem plausible, but you cannot make sure that he will remember them all, especially under stress. And you can’t be sure exactly what facts he will be asked. When you have a job, there are thousands upon thousands of little details that you absorb and remember. You can’t programme all that into a spy.’

  ‘But colonel, what about all the agents who are trained especially to fool interrogators?’

  Barakzai laughed. ‘You’ve been reading too many spy novels, Qasim. The fact is that cover stories only work, in general, when the interrogator has less first-hand knowledge than the subject.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to Mr Wardaki, or whoever he is?’

  ‘He’ll have to go before a Resistance court. It’s up to them. But bear in mind that if they let him go, he may have gathered information which could be useful to the enemy.’

  The questioning went on.

  ‘What is your work?’

  ‘I’m a fur tailor.’

  ‘Where is Faryadi’s Fur Atelier?’

  ‘In Shahr-i-Nau, the New City, opposite the Pakistan Embassy.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Jalalabad. I am an archaeologist.’

  ‘How interesting. Tell me what the Jalalabad “Fish Porch” is.’

  ‘It’s the unique stucco mosaic scene of the Buddha meeting the God of the Nagas.’