The Last Kestrel

by Jill McGivering

  Abdul’s eyes were gleaming, looking straight into hers. He didn’t speak.

  ‘The soldiers will track him down,’ she said. ‘They will kill him.’ Her heart was beating in her ears. ‘And Karam and his friends will kill you for betraying them. Don’t talk nonsense.’

  Abdul lifted a hand and stroked her cheek. His eyes were determined.

  ‘If we leave him,’ he said, ‘he will die. They have control of the land now. They will find him for us.’ He put his hand to her mouth as she opened it to protest. ‘I won’t tell them everything,’ he said. He paused. She saw her own frightened eyes reflected in his.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Please! They’ll kill him.’

  ‘I will tell them some story,’ Abdul went on.

  She listened with a sense of rising panic. She felt abandoned. He had been making this plan without her and now his mind was made up.

  ‘I won’t tell them about the training, the fighters, the market,’ he whispered. ‘But I can tell them that he was wounded. That you were afraid for him, because he is a young man and they would assume the worst. That he crept away to hide. Then perhaps, they will search for him.’

  Hasina’s eyes were wide. ‘They won’t believe you,’ she said. She caught hold of his arm and pinched it. Her heart was pushing itself out of her chest. His skin was chilled. ‘They will kill him,’ she said again. ‘Maybe they will kill you too.’ She imagined herself, left behind, alone in the world. Her stomach was chilled with terror. ‘Please, Abdul,’ she said. ‘Don’t do this.’

  Abdul shook his head. His eyes, on hers, became sad.

  ‘On my own, I cannot find him,’ he said at last. ‘But if they look for him and I go with them, then perhaps I can.’ He looked pained. ‘They have tended us,’ he said. He pointed to the bandage round his chest. ‘Maybe they will save him too. What else can we do?’

  She stroked his face. At the moment, his mind was made up. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow she would try again to stop him. His eyes fell closed and his breathing thickened into sleep. She lay still, looking at the night sky. Aref was somewhere out there, wounded and needing help. She felt that as keenly as her husband. But what would the foreigners do if they found him? Tending an old couple was one thing. But a young man, a fighter? The foreigners would never believe Abdul’s story. What if Abdul helped them to find him and then they tortured him, killed him? How could she bear that?

  Her chest was fluttering with panic. And Karam. If he and his friends knew that Abdul had collaborated, they would kill him. He would be a traitor, no better than that man from Kabul. Her life would be over. Her forehead was wet with chilled sweat. She lay, trembling. She must stop him. Somehow, she didn’t know how, she must find Aref herself.

  She closed her eyes and tried to rest. Her head was spinning, dizzying shapes whirling behind her eyes. She felt nauseous. The soldiers’ voices had fallen to a low murmur. Male snores rumbled across the sand. She started to slip, exhausted, into sleep.

  Suddenly her eyes snapped open. A truth had come to her, from Allah himself perhaps. Of course. What a fool she was. Why hadn’t she thought of it earlier? There was one possible place. A place where Aref might hide which was known only to the two of them. She knew.

  She twisted to look at Abdul, afraid for a second that she had spoken aloud. He was lying still, hunched on his side, his chest steadily rising and falling. Dare she wake him and tell him what she was thinking? No. She steadied her breathing. He might tell the foreigners. If she were right, he’d lead them straight to Aref and put them both in danger. No. She must find a way to go there herself first and see.

  She put her hands to her face and felt her hot cheeks. For a moment, she thought of hauling herself to her feet right now and creeping on her sticks to the gate and beyond. Nonsense. The guard would never let her out. The sentries and patrolling soldiers, watching from their stolen compounds throughout the village, would shoot anyone they saw creeping through the shadows at night.

  Tomorrow. She must go tomorrow. She bit her lip and wrapped her arms round her body, hugging her secret to her chest. How would she do that alone? She needed help. That conspirator? She shook her head. No. She needed someone who had their own reason to take risks. Someone with a strong spirit who might conceal the truth from these soldiers. Had Allah sent her just such a person? Hasina smiled.

  13

  Mack looked like a soldier from another century. He was sitting in a camp chair, sipping tea, a floppy khaki hat shading his eyes. His nose and neck were bright with sunburn, his face bent forward over a sheaf of papers on his knee. His expression was thoughtful. It changed abruptly as she approached him and he looked up and smiled.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said. He jumped to his feet, one hand holding flapping papers, the other held out to her. His fingers were firm and warm. ‘Civilized company.’

  ‘I was summoned.’ She settled into the camp chair beside him. ‘Ordered by a commanding officer.’

  ‘Invited, please.’ He waved at a young soldier who picked up a tin mug and poured boiling water onto a tea bag. Mack waited until the junior soldier had withdrawn before he spoke. He folded up the papers and stowed them between his thigh and the side of the chair. His hands were capable and economical in their gestures.

  ‘Truth is, I was a bit of a grouch earlier, wasn’t I?’ he said. ‘That business over the maps. Hope you’ll forgive me.’ He grimaced. ‘Too used to giving orders, I suppose. Soldiers don’t answer back.’

  Their legs were so close she could feel the warmth rising from his body. His thighs, knotted with muscle, were twice the width of hers.

  ‘That’s all right.’ She watched his eyes, trying to work out what this was all about. He was a smart man. He hadn’t called her over just to say sorry.

  ‘That request you made,’ he said. ‘To go out and see where the turp died.’ He nodded. ‘Well, I can’t promise. I’ve asked for a threat assessment. But it is possible.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She was surprised. He’d seemed adamant before. ‘Very kind.’

  ‘Well.’ He shrugged, spreading his hands. ‘Don’t want you saying we didn’t cooperate.’

  She thought of the words he’d used before: that he wouldn’t risk the lives of his men on a fool errand.

  ‘You worry about the boys, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Out here.’

  He nodded without a trace of embarrassment. ‘Of course. They’re good lads. Every one of them.’

  ‘You’re from an army family?’

  He gave her a keen look. ‘How’d you guess? Father and uncle both. Never considered anything else.’ He ticked off the countries on his fingers. ‘Northern Ireland. Balkans. Two tours in Iraq. Now this place.’

  She nodded. He struck her as a loner. But she believed too that he did care for his command. As she considered this, he raised his hand as if to wrest back control of the conversation.

  ‘And you’ve been coming to Afghanistan for, how long…?’

  ‘Since just after the fall of the Taliban,’ she said. ‘Two thousand and two.’

  He nodded, thoughtfully. ‘How does your family feel about that?’

  She smiled, sensing that he was probing. ‘I live alone,’ she said. ‘My sister’s too busy with her kids to worry much. And my father’s elderly now. I usually don’t tell him. My friends stopped pestering me years ago about coming to war zones. They think I’m mad.’

  ‘And why do you keep coming?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s addictive.’ She thought of the dead children, of the invisible villagers who’d fled their homes and were camping somewhere out in the desert, waiting to see which place the soldiers or the Taliban bombed next. John wouldn’t have bothered filing on them. ‘And besides,’ she added, ‘someone’s got to.’

  He watched her, then looked away, and she felt his attention shift and move on. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you’ve been coming for quite a few years. Tell me. What’s changed?’

  ‘You really want to know? I can speak plainly?’r />
  ‘I’d expect nothing else.’

  She sat forward and watched him closely for reaction as she spoke. ‘A great wave of hope at the start. Excitement. Expectation. And there have been gains.’ She marked them on her fingers. ‘The elections. More children in school, a lot more girls of course. A new road here. A new park there.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But the hope’s turned sour. To disillusionment, even. Most people I talk to, Afghans, I mean, they don’t feel safe. In many places, they’re even less safe now than a few years ago. No point having a school if you’re too afraid to send your children there. And then there’s corruption.’

  He bristled slightly. ‘That’s always been a problem.’

  ‘All they keep hearing is how many billions of dollars are being poured into their country. But they look around’ – she gestured round the compound, at the scratching chickens, the mud walls, the well – ‘and don’t see much to show for it. They feel cheated. By the warlords and drug-runners who’ve lined their own pockets.’

  She sat back in her chair, feeling hot in the face. She seldom expressed her views. Men so rarely asked, and those who did so rarely listened.

  ‘Takes time.’ His eyes never left her face. ‘Don’t forget, they’re starting from scratch here. After thirty years of war. There’s a lot to build. Police force. Government. Army. Legal system. Doesn’t happen overnight.’

  She sipped her tea. She’d already said too much. She felt exposed. Debate about anything that mattered to her was a type of intimacy she’d almost forgotten.

  ‘You’re not convinced, are you?’ His eyes were on hers, alert.

  ‘I think we’re getting it wrong.’ She shook her head. ‘There was a real opportunity here. A chance to make a difference. We’re squandering it.’

  ‘Ouch.’ He tipped back his head, exposing his long throat. His teeth, as he smiled, glistened in the sunlight. ‘You don’t have much faith in us.’

  She said nothing. He needs to believe in this mission, she thought. To believe wholeheartedly. How else can he lead young boys into battle, send home flag-draped coffins and yet carry on? But that doesn’t make him right.

  Somewhere beyond the compound, fresh construction work started up. The bang of steady, rhythmical hammering filled the silence between them. When he spoke again, his tone too was serious.

  ‘It’s not perfect,’ he said. His voice was low, as if he were sharing a secret. He spoke rapidly. She had to strain forward to hear. ‘Progress is slow. But let me tell you this.’ He stabbed the air with a slow, deliberate finger. ‘Every time the Taliban blows up a bus or bombs a market, people remember all over again what animals they really are. And they turn a little more against them and towards us. In the end, that’s how we’ll win this thing.’

  His eyes were so close to hers, his pupils so large, she saw herself reflected in them, a tiny distant figure, her face distorted into bulging features. His gaze was resolute. She looked abruptly away.

  ‘Win?’ She shook her head. Military thinking. He was a man who measured success in bombs and bullets. She spoke almost to herself. ‘This isn’t about victory. Not for Afghans. It’s about survival.’

  The moment passed. He exhaled heavily, sat back in his chair, his bottom bulging in the soft sling of its seat, his shoulders pressed back against the metal frame. Outside the compound, an engine stuttered, then roared into life, competing with the hammering to fill the vast vacancy of the desert air. The energy between them was depleted, as if the effort of speaking with passion had exhausted them both.

  A group of soldiers bustled past with packs on their backs, heading for the gate. It was some time before she continued.

  ‘I want to know more about Jalil’s death. There are things about it that don’t add up.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like why he left the patrol for no apparent reason. Put himself in danger.’

  Mack reached up a hand and scratched the back of his neck.

  ‘Peculiar,’ he said. ‘I agree. None of the boys could shed much light on it.’ He’d shifted in his seat and was staring out now into the thin morning light, scanning the air for answers. ‘They didn’t entirely trust him.’

  Ellen waited. The engine cut to silence, leaving the hammer blows striking a steady beat.

  ‘Maybe he was meeting someone?’ he said. ‘A contact?’

  Ellen shook her head. ‘How could he have arranged a meeting? He was a translator. He wouldn’t even have known where they were going.’

  Mack sighed to himself. ‘True,’ he said. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘He knew something.’ She spoke carefully, watching his eyes for reaction. He was looking out into middle distance. ‘He knew something incriminating. And someone shut him up.’

  ‘Knew something?’ He smiled to himself. ‘I’m afraid you’re getting back to your love of spy fiction again. The truth is usually far less—’

  He was interrupted by a cough. Najib was standing a little way from them, trying to attract their attention. Mack looked up and nodded acknowledgement. Najib led Abdul forward to speak to them. Abdul was shuffling, looking gaunter than ever, his shoulders bowed. A red bruise crept along the side of his face like a disfiguring birthmark.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Najib was red-faced as he addressed the Major. ‘This man is insisting that he must please talk to you.’

  ‘This is the man whose wife we’ve been treating, isn’t it?’ Mack offered a seat but Abdul remained standing, his arms stiff at his sides. ‘I heard you got into a scrape of your own?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Najib spoke for Abdul. ‘But he’s much better now.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. So – what can we do for you?’

  Abdul ran his hands down the seams of his shabby cotton tunic. His nails were stubby and black with dirt. He was standing with his chest hollowed, looking even shorter than he was. The smell of sour stale sweat rose from his body. His eyes were fearful and, when he began to speak, his voice was hesitant, barely more than a whisper.

  ‘He is saying he has something important to tell you,’ said Najib. ‘About his son.’

  ‘His son?’

  Abdul paused, gathered his courage and continued.

  ‘His son was injured, this is all what he is saying.’ Najib looked increasingly uncomfortable as he translated. ‘Injured in the offensive. That’s why his wife, that injured lady,’ he pointed to his leg, ‘that’s why she was not leaving. Their son was too afraid to give himself up. He was worried what the soldiers would do to him. So he is hiding somewhere in the desert. Wounded.’ Najib leaned forward and added in a quieter voice, as if it were his own thought: ‘If he is still alive.’

  Mack was listening keenly. ‘How was his son wounded?’

  Najib questioned Abdul. ‘In the stomach.’ He touched his own midriff. ‘Here, sir.’

  ‘But how? By a bullet? A falling building? What?’

  Najib scrunched up his face at Abdul’s answer. ‘He is a little unclear,’ he said at last. ‘Through explosion, he is saying.’

  Abdul was staring miserably at the earth.

  ‘So what does he want?’

  ‘A search.’ Najib was squirming. ‘He wants soldiers to go out to look for his son and he will go too and help them find him.’

  Mack shook his head. ‘That’s impossible,’ he said to Najib. ‘Please say I’m very sorry to hear about his son.’ He was leaning forward in his chair, his eyes never leaving Abdul’s face. ‘We would like to help him. But I can’t spare the men.’

  Abdul’s face contorted as Najib translated. He turned to Najib and put his hand on Najib’s arm.

  ‘His son may have good information for you, he is saying.’ Najib shrugged off Abdul’s hand. ‘He may be able to help you.’

  Mack’s expression didn’t change. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘In what way can he help me?’

  ‘If there have been fighters coming to the village,’ Najib said. ‘This man is saying that maybe his son knows about the
m.’

  Mack formed a bridge with his hands and tapped his fingertips together. Abdul’s own hands were trembling at his sides.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said at last. ‘So he’s confident his son may have information for us? If so, it may be possible for this gentleman to accompany a security patrol. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘I’d like to go too,’ said Ellen.

  Mack was getting to his feet. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He turned to Abdul to dismiss him. ‘Terrible shame,’ he said. ‘About your son.’ Najib led Abdul awkwardly away. Ellen watched the two men, young and old, shuffle across the sand.

  Mack waited until they were out of earshot. ‘See?’ he said. ‘Didn’t I tell you? That family supports the enemy.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Young man. Wounded. His family tells us nothing. Suddenly they need help and, lo and behold, he’s got intelligence for us.’ He shook his head. ‘Whole family’s involved.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Even the dead children?’

  ‘They used them. Shields. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  No point arguing. She got to her feet.

  She negotiated a bucket of water for herself from the well and found a quiet, level piece of sand. The lower rim bit into the earth, darkening it. The water in the bucket sloshed, flashed with sun, settled. She rolled her shirtsleeves up above the elbow and let her forearms sink down into the water, feeling the coolness, the delicious rush of water between her splayed fingers.

  She cupped her hands, bent down low and brought water to her face in a sudden shock of wet and freshness. Her soap sat beside her on a stone, pitted with grit but ready. She was just about to wet her face and neck a second time, savouring every slow sensation, when she heard a polite cough. Najib. She sensed him close by, waiting. No. Not now.

  She rubbed her hands over her dripping face and raised her head. A hot, hard flannel of desert heat rushed in to scour her cheeks. Najib, radiating awkwardness, was standing beside her, wringing his hands.