Jason Elliot - The Network

I dread America. More correctly, I dread the prospect of seeing my ex, who holds my children hostage there, and makes it as difficult as she possibly can for me to spend time with them by skilfully inflicting the maximum psychological damage on me when I’m at my most vulnerable. It seems unfair to indict an entire nation on the behaviour of a single woman, but the feeling of anxiety returns to me whenever I board a plane to the US, and is countered only by my excitement at the prospect of seeing my kids. It’s the emotional see-saw between these two extremes that’s hard to manage, like the toxins and antitoxins administered by professional torturers to their victims.

Flying west, time goes backwards, so I have the strange experience of arriving at Dulles airport an hour or so after I’ve left England. According to local time, on my arrival it’s 1 a.m. At the immigration desk a uniformed officer glances humourlessly at the bruise above my eye.

‘You should see the other guy,’ I say.

He runs my green card, which isn’t green, through a reader, stamps my passport, and a grin comes over his face as he hands them back.

‘Welcome home, buddy. It’s a lot safer here.’

Which is comforting, because I’m already nervous at the prospect of encountering my ex.

I have no checked baggage and pass into the arrivals hall, where I scan for a driver holding up a sign with the name of a forgettable business written on it. He looks like a former soldier, to judge from his haircut and the muscles squeezed into his tight black suit.

‘Welcome to Washington DC, sir,’ he says after we exchange innocuous-sounding pass phrases. We walk outside to a line of waiting cars and he opens the rear door of a capacious four-wheel-drive Chevrolet with darkened windows. On the far side of the back seat is the ops officer from the Counterterrorist Center. I haven’t been sure what kind of person to expect, but this isn’t it.

At first I see only the hat, an expensive-looking dark Stetson with a leather braid around the base of the crown. I see the dark blue blazer, the starched white shirt and the jeans and cowboy boots. Then I take in the long blonde hair falling over the shoulders. The Stetson tilts up, and I’m looking into the face of a good-looking woman of about fifty, whose features break into a gleaming smile that makes me freeze momentarily in surprise.

‘Howdy, amigo,’ she says with unexpected earnestness. ‘You look like you never saw a cowgirl before.’

This is quite possibly true. I’m stammering for a reply.

‘Just not this late in the evening.’

‘Well, better late than never,’ she says. ‘You ready to saddle up?’

I climb aboard and we shake hands. There’s a Germanic-looking strength to her face, softened by the fairness of her hair and skin. Her jaw is square and tapers towards a prominent chin, and the thinness of her lips suggests a masculine hardness. I feel the steely quality of her gaze on me, as if she’s assessing the nerve of her guest. We follow the convention, adhered to in certain circles, of first names only.

‘Good to meet you, Tony. Heard good things about you. I’m Grace.’ She leans forward to the driver. ‘Full chisel, Mike.’ An opaque glass screen rises between us and the driver, muffling a hiss of static as he radios the news of our departure to wherever we’re going. The car surges forward and we merge into the river of lights flowing along the Dulles Access Toll Road, heading towards Tyson’s Corner.

‘It’s a pleasure to be here,’ I say, ‘but do you mind if I ask why it has to be at night?’

‘God, you English are so darn polite.’ She laughs. ‘Course you can. I understand your time here is short. I booked you for the night so’s we can keep our appointment in Afghanistan. Time zone there is nine and a half hours ahead of us.’

‘We’re going to talk to someone who’s in Afghanistan?’

‘Better than that. But I hate to spoil a surprise.’ She clips an ID card to my jacket pocket. ‘When were you last in-country?’ I’m assuming by this she means Afghanistan, not America.

‘About four years ago.’

‘De-mining outfit, right?’

I nod.

‘Ever meet Massoud?’

‘Twice.’

‘Like him?’

‘I never thought he was a saint, but you can’t not admire him,’ I say.

‘Hell of a guy,’ she agrees. ‘Wish I could be there now. Kind of place that gets its claws into you. Ran four missions to our friend up north. Hell, I’m an honorary male Afghan.’

It’s hard to imagine. Massoud’s base of operations in the Panjshir valley and the northernmost province of Afghanistan called Badakhshan aren’t the easiest or safest places to travel. They’re the only portions of the country yet to fall to the Taliban, and are doggedly defended by Massoud and his dedicated soldiers. I travelled along the dirt roads of the region and through its spectacular mountain passes and valleys on de-mining surveys for the trust. Now Massoud’s ailing forces, squeezed between the Taliban’s inexorable advance from the south and the frontier of Tajikistan to the north, are fighting for survival. I’ve guessed that the CIA has sent advisers to the area to liaise with Massoud, the Taliban’s final opponent, but I never imagined that a woman was among them.

‘Choppered out of Tajikistan last year with a few of the boys on an Mi-8 that was damn near ready to fall apart. There was a few times I thought we were all fixin’ to eat dirt,’ she says, grinning at some recollection of peril, ‘but Massoud looked after us best he could. Didn’t seem to mind my being a woman.’

I ask if she thinks Massoud will survive the Taliban’s advance.

‘I don’t rightly want to think about it,’ she says. ‘He’s the last chance that darn country’s got. If the Taliban take the north and Massoud has to ride out on a rail, Afghanistan’s going to become one giant threat matrix that’s going to break everybody’s balls.’

‘Not yours, I take it,’ I say.

She laughs. ‘All depends. If the State Department keeps up its no-account fantasy of cosying up to the Taliban and we don’t get a result soon on Obi-Wan, then yes, mine too.’

Obi-Wan, I’m assuming, is her pet name for Osama bin Laden, a mild-mannered Saudi playboy turned anti-American jihadist. The Western world has hardly heard of him.

‘Had him in our sights a couple of times, but you have to promise me you’ll keep that dry. We even figured Massoud’s boys could do the job for us, but he’d take a whole heap of grief for it if anyone found out we’d sponsored it. Nobody in the Muslim world wants to be known for killing their very own Mahatma Gandhi.’

It’s not a comparison I would have thought of. But it’s true that bin Laden is beginning to be seen as a kind of hero in the Islamic world, and his message of defiance against American domination is catching on.

Our shared respect for Massoud has broken the ice between us, though there’s not much to break because she’s so refreshingly outspoken. I’m enjoying the contrast between talking to her and the tight-lipped Seethrough, who only shares information when he has to. We talk as the car heads along Dolley Madison Boulevard towards Maclean. Grace works for a secret unit within the already secret Counterterrorist Center, dedicated for the past couple of years to tracking and, if possible, capturing bin Laden and bringing him to trial for his role in the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. After having been hounded out of his native Saudi Arabia and then, under American pressure, from Sudan, he’s set up in Afghanistan. There he can move freely between his devotees’ training camps and preach his messianic message to all who’ll listen, though few of his fans are themselves Afghans.