Kara Kush

  ‘What’s its importance?’

  ‘Considered to be one of the most important pieces of ancient Buddhist art ever found.’

  ‘I am from Kandahar.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Restaurant hand.’

  ‘What restaurant?’

  ‘Salimi’s.’

  ‘Did you ever work at the booking desk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is the telephone number?’

  ‘Kandahar 3455.’

  *

  ‘Farmer, from Ghaza, near Paghman.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  ‘The place was bombed to pieces in an unprovoked attack by Russian aircraft.’

  ‘How many died?’

  ‘Nine out of ten.’

  ‘Date?’

  ‘The night of August 11th, 1983.’

  Barakzai told Qasim to have all the volunteers’ names checked by the turubchas, partisans ordered to continue working for the KHAD as double agents.

  Desperate to break the growing Resistance movement, the Russians were planting spies whenever they could. They had also raised the reward for the capture of insurgents from $3,000 to $10,000 a head, paid in cash, and in dollar notes.

  Their last interrogation subject was so extraordinary that after a few questions, and hardly able to suppress their smiles, they sent him to see The Eagle.

  A small, bowed figure shuffled into Adam’s ‘orderly room’, sunken eyes still bright under a small turban, white beard neatly trimmed. He raised his right hand and gave a smart salute, hand at the regulation position on his headgear. He looked all of eighty years old.

  ‘Private Ghulam Husain, from Shunbul District, reporting for duty in the army of Kara Kush!’ His voice was strong enough, even if he spoke through toothless gums.

  ‘I know I have arthritis in my legs, but my arms are still strong,’ shouted the ancient. ‘Give me grenades, and I’ll throw them further than anyone else …’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you will, father, but …’

  ‘I’ve trained all my boys, and their boys, too. There’s over a hundred of them, and we’ve got to join the war.’

  ‘How far have you trained them to throw?’

  ‘Give me one of the little Roussi things, bombs, Ragad, Fives, and I’ll show you. I’ll hurl it twice as far as anyone else.

  Ragad, that must be the Russian initials, RGD, with vowels added, Adam realized. He went into one of the adjoining caves and came back with a Russian RGD.

  ‘This?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Adam, ‘let’s go outside and see what you can do.’ The old man stumbled after The Eagle through the connecting passages to the open hillside. He put the bomb into a fabric pouch, pulled the ring and began to whirl the thing around his head. Adam started to count and when he had got to ‘two’, flung himself on the ground. After all, it only had a four-second fuse.

  As he watched, the grenade left the sling and flew what seemed an incredible distance, before shattering a rock sixty yards away. Spent metal fragments scattered over the watchers.

  ‘All right, that’s enough. You can use slingshots. You’re as cocky as the old fellow of Bamiyan who’d be a hundred and sixty now, if he were alive.’

  Ghulam Husain grinned toothlessly. Then, from the inner pocket of a waistcoat inside his padded jacket, he took out a wallet. Slowly, like someone performing a conjuring trick, he extracted a piece of yellowed paper and handed it to The Eagle.

  Adam looked at the heading: The Kabul Times. Underneath he saw a full page headline, ‘145-year-old Man Recalls Past Life’. Just below was a photograph, and it bore a remarkable resemblance to the slingman. The caption said: ‘145-year-old Ghulam Husain posing for a photographer near the wall of his house’.

  ‘But,’ said Adam, searching for words, ‘that would make you – let’s see – one hundred and sixty years old.’

  ‘No, I’m not 160, only a hundred and fifty-eight!’ cackled the ancient, stowing the clipping away. ‘And I’ll tell you some more. I know the Russians. When I was ninety, those devils actually came into Afghanistan. It was in the north and they got forty miles into the country, pursuing a guerrilla leader who had taken sanctuary with us. We saw them off the premises, Eagle! I’ve got experience of the Rouss, don’t you see! I’m a useful man. Most of these silly children here don’t know how to fight, don’t know their enemy.’

  When he was ninety …Adam remembered that there had been such an incursion, in Stalin’s time. The old fellow was getting even more animated.

  ‘We’ll shove their Victoria back down their throats …’ He ended with a rolling, obscene, untranslatable oath: ‘Gohimadaripirishanbadani-jaddishaitan …’

  ‘All right, Ghazi, warrior hero: Queen Victoria’s dead. It’s the Russians now. You’re in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other people to see …’

  When Barakzai had seen all the volunteers, accepting some and referring others for further enquiry, he and Qasim began work with the other hostages. The information which they brought, from all over Afghanistan, was not only of astonishing variety, it also helped to fill out the picture which the Resistance could use in planning co-operation between town and country, between Turk and Tajik, Pashtun and Nuristani.

  So far, nobody in the Resistance had collated the material.

  2 Silahdar Haidar, Weapon-Bearer, reporting, Komondon

  Eagle’s Nest

  JUNE 20

  In Kabul and the other large cities of the country – in Kandahar, Herat, Mazar, Jalalabad, Maimana and Khanabad – resistance was impossible to stamp out. No sooner did the Russians and their Afghan communist allies stop one outbreak than another started. The cities of Herat to the west and Kandahar, to the south, were dive-bombed again and again. In town after town, civilians suddenly appeared from nowhere and stabbed Russians to death in the streets. Women rushed up to off-duty soldiers and threw their arms around them, blowing both of them to shreds with hand-grenades. Some of these very same bombs had been sold to the Afghans by Russian infantrymen, or exchanged for hashish, for which they were developing a marked taste.

  Russian deserters who got out of Afghanistan told the world’s television audiences that the Red Army now compelled them to sign a paper saying that, if captured, they would kill themselves. In the event, none did.

  People told of red-hot chillies, sold to the Russians as sweetmeats which the underpaid Soviet soldiers insisted on eating, the tears running down their cheeks, and saying, when challenged, ‘I paid for this – I am eating my money!’

  A party of guerrillas, coming upon a village in the mountains west of Kabul, demanded food. When the people brought them bowls of inedible gruel, they spat it out, and threatened to beat the peasants. Crying with shame that they had nothing better to offer the warriors, the people of the village admitted that what they had brought was boiled and puréed grass: all that they themselves could find to eat. Their fields had been ruined by phosphorus bombs dropped by the Russian aircraft. Some of the narratives bore out reports which had already appeared in the world’s press.

  It took ten days, with tanks and flame-throwers, to crush a single uprising in Herat. At one time, fifteen thousand people were imprisoned in a single Kabul jail, the notorious Pul-i-Charkhi. The elite Afghan garrison at the great fort, the Bala Hissar in Kabul, rebelled. Some men fought their way out. Most of them were shot by Russian firing squads, according to other deserters.

  But if oppression produced heroism and resistance, it also encouraged other characteristics in a minority, the self-seekers. Although the treachery and settling of old scores, the false denunciations and the cowardice of some fell far short of the picture of ‘the faithless Afghan’ once promoted by some writers – there were enough dishonourable acts.

  Some Afghans joined the Russians. Some ‘fled’ to Pakistan posing as refugees, expecting to gain sympathy and to live a life of idleness. A good many managed to live in luxury in exile, earning the name of ‘
Gucci Guerrillas’, and pretending to organize opposition to the communists from safe havens. The Russians spread the word that there was no point in the West helping the Afghans as they were so divided: and pointed to the assortment of competing émigré groups in Pakistan.

  A great deal of information about the world reaction to the Russian invasion continued to filter back to the Afghans: through smuggled letters, returning fighters, radio broadcasts and through blundering admissions by the red Afghan regime’s press.

  Afghans all over the world did what little they could to alert foreign opinion: but the fact that the Afghans were fighting back seemed to have had an adverse effect on world sympathy. People, it seemed, felt that the Afghans were managing to hold their own, needed no outside help. As one hostage put it, ‘If we had been totally helpless, the outside world would have been stirred more deeply, I believe. Listening to the overseas broadcasts, we hear how heroic we are. Nobody asks where we can get the arms …’

  Afghans demonstrated in front of Afghan and Soviet embassies: in Washington and Tehran, in Paris and in New Delhi. Afghan diplomats defected in a dozen capitals. The press and television gave them, on the whole, brief – almost dismissive, coverage. Many overseas Afghans slipped into the country from the Iranian and Pakistani borders and joined the guerrillas. Others sent money to relatives who managed to buy the trickle of guns which were getting into the country.

  Geography – and ethnic and other differences – made it difficult for guerrilla forces to unite: but, paradoxically, this made it all the harder for the Russians to deal with them. Destroying one Resistance group did not affect any of the others.

  The Resistance owed much of its strength to Afghan Army desertions. No less than seventy thousand men – three-quarters of the Army – were with the patriots in the mountains. Most took their weapons with them.

  As the stories unfolded, some of them at enormous length, the line of people waiting to be questioned pressed forward, as if by this action they could hasten the process. One man, however, sat silently aside, as if wrapped in thought, waiting his turn but yet refusing to stand in line, speaking to nobody.

  When his turn came, he was seen to be a rugged-looking northerner, who spoke Persian with the accent of the people of the Oxus, and held himself as if he had been accustomed to authority. He had been picked up by the Russians the previous day, for having no papers, and was awaiting interrogation when he was released by the attack on the Paghman castle.

  ‘Sir: I have waited until you saw the others because I have a special message for The Eagle, and I can give it to no other.’

  The colonel could not shake the man’s resolve. Adam came in response to his call.

  ‘If it is an operational matter,’ The Eagle was becoming quite professional, ‘you should have seen someone about it at once. Who are you?’

  ‘I am Shahrdar, Mayor, Haidar, Weapon-Bearer to the Lords of Sher-Qala, near the Russian frontier. I bring news of my lord the Noyon Juma, who is dead, a martyr. He died fighting the Russians and killed many, blowing up a halikuptar.’

  ‘Welcome, Silah-Dar!’ Adam bowed, hand on heart. He knew how rank-conscious the descendants of the ancient Mongols were. ‘You have honoured us. And what is your message?’

  Haidar sat down on the seat indicated by The Eagle.

  ‘Commander. The treasures of Afghanistan are being taken to Russia. Large quantities of the rubies of Badakhshan and of the lapis lazuli of Jurm, and emeralds and gold, too, have been collected near the port of Qizil Qala. They are then transported to the Soviet Union, across the Oxus River, on the gunboat Jihun. There is talk, too, of a great treasure which has been found and which will go by the same route.’

  The Eagle raised an eyebrow. ‘And the message?’

  ‘My lord Juma had heard of you. He wanted to capture or destroy the treasures, to deny them to the Russians. To do this he needed the help of a great commander and a group like yours. There is much confusion in the north. We are either untrained or else the roaming bands are not to be trusted. He sent me to you to say that the treasure, if we got it, could be used to buy arms. We had only one rifle and a few old guns at Sher-Qala. And these were shared by the experienced fighters.’

  This information matched something that The Eagle’s agents had reported from Kabul. General Kirilyan, a high-ranking KGB officer, had been murdered by his woman servant, and some important papers, relating to the transfer of treasure to Russia, had disappeared. Could they be connected to the Oxus hoard?

  ‘General Kirilyan,’ he said, half aloud, ‘had some papers dealing with an Afghan treasure …’

  ‘Aghai Kara Kush! – Mr Eagle.’ It was the old woman, Karima, who had come here, in a long detour, all the way from Jalalabad, after getting away from Kabul. She was now the chief housekeeper at the Caves. ‘May I say something?’

  He motioned her to put down the tea-tray she was holding and spoke kindly enough, although he was thinking about the treasure and did not relish the interruption.

  ‘Sir, I wonder if the papers of General Kirilyan which I gave you when I came here, might have something to do with what you were talking about …’

  She hadn’t mentioned Kirilyan’s name to the guerrillas in the Caves before.

  ‘But weren’t those just some papers of yours, given to us for safe-keeping?’

  ‘No, sir. They were papers belonging to General Kirilyan. They were in front of him, on the table, the day I … finished him. You see, Mr Zoltan always said …’

  So one of the men whom Karima had killed was Kirilyan himself! And his papers, the missing documents, were …

  The Eagle was already on his feet and running from the cave, into the storehouse. He found a mound of documents of all kinds, anything but well organized by Zelikov, who should have filed them. Within three minutes, knowing things by sight rather than by content, as is the way with people who look rather than read, Karima had found the sheaf of documents. ‘These are the ones, sir.’

  They were, of course, in Russian. Who could translate them? Azambai the Turkestani was away on a scouting mission; Zelikov was hopeless for anything more than simple interpreting. The Eagle sent Qasim to find out if anyone among the new arrivals was thoroughly versed in Russian. ‘Try to find someone educated, Qasim!’

  In four or five minutes he was back, followed by a tall, slim girl dressed in jeans, battle-top and cartridge belt.

  ‘I know Russian very well, commander.’

  He looked at her, half-absently, wondering whether she really did know Russian, whether the papers did really contain anything of value. Then she said, in English, ‘Do I call you Eagle, or since we know each other, could it be Adam Durany?’

  She held out her hand, quite formally, as if to show the degree of familiarity that she expected.

  Adam stared at her and tried to say something, and somehow, the words, he knew, would be all wrong. ‘You’re …’

  Noor Sharifi said, ‘There is an old fairy-story, where the witch says, “If you don’t know my name, you can call me grandma!”’

  ‘Noor!’ That had been her favourite fairy-tale …

  Then they just stood there, clasping hands, and laughing until the tears rolled down their cheeks, so that they could not even see each other. ‘Noor Sharifi,’ Adam said.

  Karima said, ‘If this is the daughter of the great Sirdar Sharifi, I’ll get some fresh tea.’ She bustled off to change into a clean apron. In fact, the tea she had already brought was still perfectly good.

  Noor started to work on the Russian documents.

  According to General Kirilyan’s secret papers, Afghanistan now owed the Soviet Union no less than one billion dollars for military aid in the war against the guerrillas and for ‘general policing’. One million dollars a week had been allocated for the Kabul government, since little was being collected from taxes, and other revenues were almost non-existent. Rebels had destroyed two hundred million dollars worth of government property.

  The Afghans had unde
rtaken to supply the Soviet Union with natural gas through the existing pipeline, and to allow extensive development of the oilfields in the north. Sheep and cattle, hides and skins, rugs and carpets would also go to the Soviet Union to offset the debt. Rich in minerals, the country would also send tin, copper, chromite, zinc, lead and manganese, even salt, in ‘fraternal assistance contributions’.

  As the world’s only source of the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, Afghanistan would give the entire production – some three tons a year – to the Russians. The rubies from the famous Jagdalak mines were also part of the contract.

  It was estimated by the Russians that the treasures from archaeological sites, the lapis lazuli and the rubies, when marketed abroad, would fetch about ten billion dollars. The Russians were getting a good bargain.

  This despoiling of the country had become General Kirilyan’s job because, interestingly enough, the whole enterprise came under the KGB.

  ‘This is obviously too devious a matter to leave to the internal affairs ministries of the USSR,’ said The Eagle, as Noor translated the documents to him. ‘And it also helps to destroy the Afghan economy.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Noor, ‘there’s much more. Look at this: “The KGB is legally responsible for all precious jewels and metals in the USSR. Because of the special nature of the Afghan materials, however, their handling will come under Halzun, Dzhanmagometov, head of the Second Main Directorate of the KGB.”’ She stopped.

  ‘I can see that the secret police should be looking after Russia’s gold reserves and other precious metals, as a matter of security,’ said Qasim; ‘but what is this Second Main Directorate, and why should they care about artefacts and things like that?’

  Noor leafed through the papers. ‘Here is something that might connect with it.’ She read out: ‘Extensive activity, throughout the world, by the organisms established by the Second Directorate have made it possible to obtain significant amounts of valuta, foreign currency, by the judicious placing of works of art. There is a large collectors’ market in the capitalist world for such things as the jewelled artefacts found in Afghanistan, while the price of lapis lazuli, a precious stone, may be controlled and encouraged upwards by a monopoly of it. Pakistan is to become a major source of “ancient” artefacts.’