Tom Smith - Agent 6

– Wake up!

His eyes rolled like two heavy stone slabs, briefly revealing the whites. Nara ran to the kitchen, filled a dirty glass with cold water, returned to the bed and threw it in his face.

*

Leo opened his eyes and touched the spots of water on his face. He’d forgotten the events of the last few minutes and when he looked up to see his most promising student standing at the foot of the bed he wondered what she was doing in his apartment. She was in a state of some disarray. How long had she been standing there and where had she come from? He tried to remember her name but couldn’t. Enveloped in a sensation of supreme comfort, all he wanted was to sleep. Feeling his eyes close, he asked, his voice croaky:

– Why are you here?

She crouched down, close to him. He noticed that her lip was bleeding and her cheek was bruised. She’d been beaten. Her voice was shrill and loud and it annoyed him to be disturbed in this way. She said:

– They tried to kill me. They broke into my home.

Leo felt the opium pipe roll out of his hand. He tried to catch it, closing his palm, but it was too late. His student cried out:

– Don’t you understand? They’re outside! They followed me here! We’re in danger!

Leo nodded but he was not sure what he was agreeing with. Breathing deeply, he watched as Nara took the candle and placed it under his outstretched hand. His skin began to burn.

There was a sensation that his brain slowly registered as pain. A patch th. Brn began to blister. He jerked his hand away, the fastest movement he’d made for hours, studying it as a bubble of red, angry skin took shape. Cracks appeared in his fragile opium shell. He felt sick, a confusion of pain and opium-contentment, the two sensations clashing. Standing up, unsteady on his feet, he was straddling two worlds: the opiate existence and the real world, where there was pain and grief and loss. Resting against the wall, the sickness grew stronger. He walked to the sink, running his hand under cold water. The pain came and went, then returned even stronger than before.

Leo managed to keep the nausea under control. He turned back to the room, regarding his protegee’s injury, slowly deducing the events that must have preceded her arrival. She was only partially dressed and he gestured at the few items of clothing in his possession, spread across the floor and a single chair.

– Take what you need.

While she rooted through his slim assortment of clothes, he asked:

– Who did this to you?

Before she could answer the apartment went dark. The power had been shut off.

Leo peered out over the city. There were lights on next door. His neighbours had electricity. The wires to the apartment must have been cut. He looked down at the street below. There were at least ten people outside.

– Who are they?

– I don’t know. Two men attacked me at home. I injured one. The other chased me.

– Did they speak to you?

– They’d found out I was working for the secret police.

He thought for a moment, examining the blister. Nara joined him, wearing his baggy grey trousers.

– Do you own a gun?

He shook his head, watching as Nara’s strength briefly left her, her expression seeming to collapse. For the first time she sounded helpless:

– What are we going to do?

If the mob broke in Leo knew his time in Afghanistan would count for nothing. The crowd would kill him without a second thought, seeing him as no different to the soldiers who’d recently arrived in Red Army uniforms.

Something struck the timber door. There was another heavy blow and a white zigzag line appeared. They would be inside in seconds.

Leo lifted up his mattress, leaning it against the door. At the base he piled up the bed sheets and his collection of books. He smashed his only chair, kicking the timber fragments onto the heap. Looking around for more things to burn he saw the collection of letters that he’d started composing for his daughters back home. There were at least fifty partially written pages, efforts at correspondence that he’d abandoned, disheartened by his inability to express himself – his writing came across as matter of fact and unemotional, detailing what the city looked like, or how he’d grown to enjoy a new type of food. He was incapable of putting into words the simple fact that he missed his daughters and regretted any anguish he’d caused by his absence.

Nara cried out:

– Leo!

The attackers continued to rain blows against the door. They were almost inside. Keeping the letters, Leo picked up the fat-bellied, old-fashioned kerosene lamp. He threw it against the door and it smashed. Kerosene poured down the timber. He picked up the candle, lighting the kerosene. Flames ran across the floor, up the mattress, over the wood. The mattress popped and spat, and in seconds the sheets were ablaze.

Grabbing the spare container of kerosene, he gestured for Nara to join him by the far window.

– Climb onto the roof.

The roof was lined with tin, supported by a timber frame. Nara knew it would burn. She said:

– The roof?

Leo nodded.

– We better hope someone saves us before it collapses.

Their attackers were no longer trying to break the door down, confused by the fire. As Nara pulled herself onto the roof, Leo collected his opium pipe. Perched on the window ledge, he threw the second container into the middle of the fire. The plastic quickly melted. Climbing up onto the roof, feeling a sudden rush of heat, he glanced back to see the mattress consumed with flames, billowing black smoke.

On the roof, he surveyed the substantial smoke trail rising into the night sky. A patrol might come in time. Nara was crouching in the corner of the roof furthest from the fire. Leo sat beside her. He now owned nothing in the world apart from the clothes he was wearing, the bundle of unfinished, inarticulate letters to his daughters and the opium pipe in his pocket. Legs crossed, he watched as the flames broke through a patch of roof. They did not have long. For the first time that night he behaved as any normal man might and put an arm around his injured student.

Picking from a fistful of sugar-coated almonds, Fahad Mohammad sat near the crest of a hill overlooking the Kabul River. A bright moon hung over the gorge, but even without its light he could navigate down the slopes that dropped sharply to the river. Cradled in between the hills, like a giant concrete mouth, was the Sarobi Dam. It providing a significant portion of the capital’s electricity, and its strategic importance to the occupation could not be underestimated. The access road had been fortified with checkpoints and barbed-wire barriers. Two tanks were stationed at the top of the dam, one facing north, one south – guns angled high as if they feared that the mountains would rise up and smash the precious structure. Impressive as these defences might seem to Soviet planners they were of little concern to Fahad. No attack by the mujahedin was ever going to travel up the road. He liked to tell his men: The Soviets worry about controlling roads. This is not a country of roads. Let them keep our roads. We will keep the rest of Afghanistan.

There were perhaps fifty soldiers in total protecting the facility, a mix of Afghan army recruits commanded by the occupiers. The notion that this was a coalition of equals was insultng – the Afghans were under orders, subservient, slaves in their own country and an abomination in Fahad’s eyes. Though the troop numbers were significant, their cautious deployment underscored their belief that mines scattered across the gorge would prevent any attack.