Tom Smith - Agent 6

Fahad shouted back angrily:

– You are a non-believer! You wouldn’t understand the significance of this event!

Furious, Nara replied:

– My faith doesn’t make me stupid. I don’t believe I’m invulnerable.

Leo interrupted:

– It is irrelevant what we believe. We cannot stay here! By tomorrow morning we will be too weak to run, too weak to escape. We must press ahead. It is a calculated risk. I will go first.

Fahad replied:

– You are the reason for this mission. You are the person the CIA wants. If you die the mission has failed. The girl should go first.

Nara said:

– I agree. I will go first.

Fahad contradicted her:

– Not you. The girl, the miracle girl, she will find a path. It is no coincidence that she is with us when this happened. We must trust in her.

Aside from the patter of rain, there was silence as Leo tried to unpick Fahad’s suggestion. The man was sincere in his belief that Zabi was divinely protected. It was not cowardice that underpinned his suggestion that a young girl should walk first, leading them through the minefield, but piety. Leo was quite sure Fahad’s acute sense of pride meant that he would rather lose his own life than appear to be hiding behind a girl. To Fahad it was an insult to God for any other decision to be taken. Nara spoke first, her careful response displaying diplomatic sensitivity:

– I will go first. I will lead. If this displeases Allah I will die, if not, then we need not discuss the matter further. But there is no chance, Fahad, no chance at all, that Zabi will walk first. Not while I am alive.

As expected, Fahad was insulted.

– This has nothing to do with bravery. I would gladly walk first Nara didnck Fahad amp;rlet him finish.

– Without you, we’re all dead. Without Leo, the mission has failed. I am the only person who we can risk. This isn’t theology or bravery. It’s common sense. I will walk first. You will follow me.

Leo protested:

– No, Nara, you must carry Zabi. I will walk first. Nara rejected this idea.

– The CIA is not going to be interested in me. Without Fahad as our guide, we’ll be lost. It has to be me. It is absurd to discuss this further. You must carry Zabi.

Without waiting for his reply, Nara manoeuvred around him, hands on his waist, until she was about to step forward. Leo cried out:

– Wait!

He remembered the mine that had landed directly in front. He waited, rain streaming down his face, until lightning flashed in the clouds. The mine was still there, unexploded. Nara had seen it too. She let go of his waist, stepping around the mine and moving to the front, overtaking Fahad.

Leo picked Zabi up:

– Hold on to my neck.

Weakened by the hail, he could feel his muscles struggling even though the girl was light. He stepped around the mine, his legs shaking with fatigue. Nara was out of sight, lost in the darkness, now at the front. He heard her voice.

– Fahad, follow my footsteps exactly. Put your hands on my waist. That is the only way you can do it! That is the only way we’re going to survive.

Leo wondered if he was going to refuse. Fahad called back to Leo:

– You must also do the same.

Leo placed one hand on Fahad’s waist, keeping the other supporting Zabi.

Forming an awkward human train they set off, shuffling forward blindly, guided only by the infrequent flashes of lightning. The storm had passed, moving over the mountains of Pakistan. Leo could hear Fahad’s heavy breathing. He could hear their shoes on the ground. Each footstep that sank into the damp soil brought a sensation of relief. Leo felt Zabi squeeze his neck in fear. It was the closest he had ever come to praying.

The truck shuddered over a pothole – one of many in the stricken road – and Leo woke, having dozed on the world’s most expensive bed, several million dollars’ worth of heroin concealed in flour bags branded with the emblem of a Western aid charity. The voice of his addiction was still demanding that he smoke but it was growing fainter by the day. Though it was a cruel test of his determination, surrounding him with drugs, opium had only ever been a way of suppressing his desire to desert his post, to nullify his restlessness and his impossible hopes of an investigation into the murder of his wife. What had once been unachievable was within his grasp: passage to America and a path to New York.

They’d crossed into Pakistan shortly after clearing the minefield. Since they’d walked in almos complete darkness they were unable to ascertain if all the mines had been detonated. The question of whether they were blessed or whether it was chance remained unanswered. Leo didn’t spend too long dwelling on the matter. As a soldier in the Great Patriotic War, he’d seen examples of his friends believing they were saved by a miracle, a bullet lodged in a religious trinket, devoting themselves to understanding the meaning of this only to be killed a few weeks later. Despite his scepticism, he was pleased that their guide’s hostility had softened. As the sun rose, brushing away the last of the storm, the four of them had stopped on the crest of a Pakistani hill and looked back to see Soviet attack helicopters in the distance circling the Khyber Pass. Had they waited for daylight they would have been caught. Whatever the truth of the matter, it certainly felt like a miracle.

Cold, filthy and exhausted, they’d reached Dara, a small town in the northern tribal region of Pakistan that existed like the capital city of an unofficial nation. Misunderstood as a lawless buffer state, it was instead governed by the laws of survival and commerce. While Leo had expected the sight of a Soviet civilian, a woman, a badly burnt young girl and a mujahedin fighter to attract attention, this was a town entirely without convention, dominated not by religious stricture or government policy but by brazen material needs – a trading bazaar for three of the world’s top commodities: drugs, weapons and information. They were concerned with the questions of what you wanted to buy and what you wanted to sell. There were cottage heroin factories dotted through the town like teashops, bags of unprocessed opium sold for dollars, packed on the backs of mules. Weapons were tested and inspected, taken out of town and fired at tree stumps. Crates of bullets were examined as if they were treasure chests of rubies and emeralds. War funds were raised. War funds were stolen. Allegiances were bought and broken. Intelligence was sold. Victories were invented and defeats denied. From the north there was an influx of Afghan refugees, many with terrible injuries, legs sliced with shrapnel, fleeing the conflict. From the south came a trickle of Western journalists and travellers, some dressed in traditional loose-fitting clothes, others in designer khaki trousers, with sophisticated gadgets. Judging from the small number of journalists, even though this was the closest point of access to Afghanistan, Leo surmised that the war had so far failed to capture the West’s imagination. Such an absence of interest did not bode well for his defection.

Though no longer in Afghanistan, they were still in danger. The Soviets were active in the tribal region, crossing the border with a frequency that showed blatant disregard for Pakistani sovereignty. Leo had heard discussion of a series of covert operations intended to destabilize the area and bring pressure on Pakistan to patrol the full length of the border, closing it down. Extreme acts of provocation were being planned as punishment for helping the mujahedin even if Pakistan’s stated policy was neutrality. These Communist agents would be Afghan, perhaps disguised as refugees. Some were even corrupt mujahedin. Fahad found it implausible that any mujahedin fighter could be bought by the Soviets. Leo told him that he had seen lists of men who were on the Soviet payroll, identified by code names, arguing that on any side there were always men who could be bought, characters with weaknesses that could be exploited. Fahad had shaken his head in disgust, saying Leo spoke like a Westerner, rotten with compromise and ambiguity.