Frederick Forsyth - The Afghan

From years of trading with Pakistan, the courtly Arab spoke good Urdu, and he and the imam conversed in that language. He sipped his tea, took sweet cakes and wiped his fingers on a small cambric handkerchief. All the while, he nodded and glanced at the Afghan. When he heard of the breakout from the prison van, he smiled in approval. Then he broke into Arabic.

“And you wish to leave Pakistan, my brother?”

“There is no place for me here,” said Martin. “The imam is right. The secret police will find me and hand me back to the dogs of Kabul. I will end my life before that.”

“Such a pity,” murmured the Qatari. “So far… such a life. And if I take you to the Gulf States, what will you do?”

“I will try to find other true believers and offer what I can.”

“And what would that be? What can you do?”

“I can fight. And I am prepared to die in Allah’s holy war.”

The courtly captain thought for a while.

“The loading of the carpets takes place at dawn,” he said. “It will take several hours. They must be well belowdecks, lest the sea spray touch them. Then I shall depart, sails down. I shall cruise close past the end of the harbor mole. If a man were to leap from the concrete to the deck, no one would notice.” After the ritual salutations, he left. In the darkness, Martin was led by the boy to the dock. Here he studied the Rasha so that he would recognize her in the morning. She came past the mole just before eleven. The gap was eight feet, and Martin made it with inches to spare, after a short run. The Omani had the helm. Faisal bin Selim greeted Martin with a gentle smile. He offered his guest fresh water to wash his hands and delicious dates from the palms of Muscat.

At noon, the elderly man spread two mats on the broad coaming round the cargo hold. Side by side, the two men knelt for the midday prayers. For Martin, it was the first occasion of prayer other than in a crowd where a single voice can be drowned by all the others. He was word-perfect.

When an agent is way out there in the cold, on a “black” and dangerous job, his controllers at home are avid for some sign that he is all right: still alive, still at liberty, still functioning. This indication may come from the agent himself, by phone call, a message in the classified ads of a paper or a chalk mark on a wall, a preagreed “drop.” It may come from a watcher who makes no contact but observes and reports back. It is called a “sign of life.” After days of silence, controllers become very twitchy waiting for some sign of life. It was midday in Thumrait, early breakfast time in Scotland, the wee small hours in Tampa. The first and the third could see what the Predator could see, but did not know its significance. Need to know; they had not been told. But Edzell air base knew.

Clear as crystal, alternately lowering the forehead to the deck and raising the face to the sky, the Afghan was saying his prayers on the deck of the Rasha. There was a roar from the terminal operators in the ops room. Seconds later, Steve Hill took a call at his breakfast table, and gave his wife a passionate and unexpected kiss.

Two minutes later, Marek Gumienny took a call in bed in Old Alexandria. He woke up, listened, smiled, murmured, “Way to go,” and went back to sleep. The Afghan was still on course.

With a good wind off the south, the Rasha hoisted sail, closed down her engine, and the rumbling below was replaced by the calm sounds of the sea: the lapping of the water under the bow, the sigh of the wind in the sails, the creak of block and tackle.

The dhow, shadowed by the invisible Predator four miles above her, crept along the coast of southern Iran and into the Gulf of Oman. Here, she turned half to starboard, trimmed her sail as the wind took her full astern and headed for the narrow gap between Iran and Arabia called the Straits of Hormuz. Through this narrow gap, where the tip of Oman ’s Musandam Peninsula is only eight miles from the Persian shore, a constant stream of mighty tankers went past: some low in the water, full of crude oil for the energy-hungry West; others riding high, going up-gulf to fill with Saudi or Kuwaiti crude. The smaller boats like the dhow stayed closer to the shore to allow the leviathans the freedom of the deep channel. Supertankers, if there is something in their way, simply cannot stop.

The Rasha, being in no hurry, spent one night hove to amid the islands east of the Omani naval base at Kumzar. Sitting on the raised poop deck in the balmy night, still clearly visible on a plasma screen at a Scottish air base, Martin caught sight of two “cigarette boats” by the light of the moon and heard the roar of their huge outboards as they sped out of Omani waters to make the crossing to southern Iran.

These were the smugglers he had heard about; owing allegiance to no country, they ran the smuggling trade. On some empty Iranian or Baluchi beach, they would rendezvous at dawn with the receivers, off-load their cargo of cheap cigarettes and take on board, surprisingly angora goats so valued in Oman. On a flat sea, their pencil-slim aluminum boats, with the cargo lashed midships and the crew hanging on for dear life, would be powered by two immense 250-horsepower outboards at over fifty knots. They are virtually uncatchable, know every creek and inlet, and are accustomed to driving without lights in complete darkness right across the paths of the tankers to the shelter of the other side.

Faisal bin Selim smiled tolerantly. He, too, was a smuggler, but rather more dignified than these vagabonds of the Gulf he could hear in the distance. “And when I have brought you to Arabia, my friend, what will you do?” he asked quietly. The Omani deckhand was at the forepeak, handline over the side, trying for a fine fish for breakfast. He had joined the other two for evening prayers. Now was the hour of pleasant conversation.

“I do not know,” admitted the Afghan. “I know only that I am a dead man in my own country; Pakistan is closed to me, for they are running dogs of the Yankees. I hope to find other true believers, and ask to fight with them.” “Fight? But there is no fighting in the United Arab Emirates. They, too, are wholly allied to the West. The interior is Saudi Arabia, where you will be found immediately and sent back. So…”

The Afghan shrugged. “I only ask to serve Allah. I have lived my life. I will leave my fate in His care.”

“And you say you are prepared to die for Him,” said the courtly Qatari. Mike Martin thought back to his boyhood and his prep school in Baghdad. Most of the pupils were Iraqi boys, but they were the sons of the cream of society, and their fathers were keen that they would speak perfect English and rise to rule great corporations dealing with London and New York. The curriculum was in English, and that included the learning of traditional English poetry. Martin had always had one favorite: the story of how Horatius of Rome defended the last bridge before the invading army of the House of Tarquin as the Romans hacked down the bridge behind him. There was a verse the boys used to chant together:

To every man upon this earth, Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better, Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods.

“If I can die shahid- in the service of His jihad, of course,” he replied.

The dhow master considered for a while, and changed the subject. “You are wearing the clothes of Afghanistan,” he said. “You will be spotted in minutes. Wait.”

He went below and came back with a freshly laundered dish-dasha, the white cotton robe that falls from shoulders to ankles in an unbroken line. “Change,” he ordered. “Drop the shalwarkameez and the Talib turban over the side.”