The Last Kestrel

by Jill McGivering

  ‘Now, Ellen. Anything you’d like to ask?’

  She looked round at their eager faces and took her courage in both hands.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘but I need to request a slight change of plan.’

  The officers stared at her blankly.

  ‘Could I possibly defer Rounell for now? I need to get back to the offensive tomorrow. As early as possible. To Major Mack’s camp.’

  The media officer rose to his feet, his expression indignant. The exhausted youngster stared at his fingernails. The Commander watched her through narrowed eyes.

  ‘I am sorry.’ She looked round at them all. ‘But there’s something very important there I need to do.’

  21

  The Danish supply convoy skidded to a halt in a swirl of dust, which poured in through the open top hatch and flooded the vehicle. Ellen coughed and drew her scarf more tightly across her mouth. The Danes were standing now, their blond heads submerged in helmets, goggles and layers of scarves. When she blinked, watching, the dust from her eyelashes drifted lightly onto her cheeks.

  A clatter as the back doors were prised open. Fine particles hung in columns in the falling shafts of light. She lifted a hand to say a silent thank you to the Danes and clambered down, feeling compact earth again under her feet after the lurching ride. She walked down the dirt street to the familiar compound gate.

  Inside, the compound was quiet. She stood, looking over the tents and makeshift structures, checking for change. The camp was intact but almost deserted. She ran a hand across her sweaty face. The sun was high, flashing on the walls of the building. The men must be out on a day-long operation. She walked across the sand with a sense of disquiet and checked the officers’ sleeping area and the comms room. No sign of Mack.

  She stood inside the doorway of the translators’ room and looked round. Pieces of crumpled clothing belonging to the fat-bellied translator were strewn around the room. His bedding was piled in a messy heap in the corner. But all evidence of Najib had been expunged. His neatly arranged, battered books, his tea tray and cracked cups, his folded cotton shirt. Nothing remained.

  She sank onto a mud brick against the wall, her head falling forward into her hands. She’d been certain that if she insisted on coming straight back, she’d catch him. Her challenge, she’d been sure, would be to make him open up to her, to draw out of him the details and testimony she needed to seal the story. It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d have left so soon. Her palms were hot and damp against her cheeks. Now what? This was as far as her hasty planning had taken her.

  Najib, she thought. The room stared back emptily at her. She wondered where he’d gone now, how he’d find work and whether he’d ever realize his dream of settling with a wife and being a good father to his children.

  Outside, an engine started up. She lifted her face, specks of light dancing in her vision, and looked at her watch. It was after one. Najib was gone. She only had a few hours left before she had to send something to Phil. She had a lot of work to do.

  The rucksack chafed her shoulders as she strode out down the main street and cut through the corn, trying to retrace the route Hasina had taken her. The sun was intense, glancing off the hard earth and setting the crops ablaze. Flies nipped at the soft skin of her neck, found their way into her trousers and fed on the soft wetness behind her knees. By the time she reached the gully and started to slither, dislodging stones, down its steep sides, she was lathered in sweat and panting.

  She moved the dead foliage and pushed the rucksack ahead of her through the narrow tunnel, trying to control the waves of panic that rose inside her as she felt the clay squeeze of the earth round her body. The stink hit her when she was halfway through. A putrid smell of rotting mixed with human waste. At the end of the tunnel, the rucksack disappeared, falling forward and smacking onto the invisible ground. The stench hit her full in the face. She gagged and stopped to pull her scarf across her nose and mouth.

  In the torchlight, his skin looked pallid and waxy. His eyes were closed. Dead, she thought at first, then heard the shallow rasp of his breathing. She stood for a second, looking him over. His body was slumped along the ground, his head on one side in the dust. His clothes were filthy, the bandages round his wound mauled as if he’d clawed at them in pain. His lower body was discoloured with dried urine and the dark stains of shit. An animal, she thought, which has crawled into its burrow to die. Whatever information she hoped to get out of him, it wasn’t going to come for a long time.

  His wrist showed a weak pulse. She unpacked the rucksack round her, the torch between her teeth, then eased him round and forward, using her own body as a lever as she raised his upper body from the waist until he was slumped upright against her. Once she opened the first bottle, she started to trickle water between his lips. At first there was no response. Water ran in rivulets from the sides of his mouth. Some seeped down into his throat without resistance. After some time, when she tried to increase the flow, he jerked, coughed, spluttered for air.

  She mixed up a sachet of energy drink and dribbled it patiently into his mouth, trying to inject life back into him, drop by drop. When he couldn’t take any more liquid, she wrapped her arms around him and let his head drop against the soft pad of her shoulder. The darkness closed in around them. He was breathing more comfortably now, as if he’d drifted into sleep. She tightened her arms around his chest and held him to her, thinking of the way Hasina had embraced him as she protected him so fiercely from death.

  As she sat still in the intense blackness, her eyes straining to find a shape, a speck of light, time seemed to be suspended. The events of the last few days pressed in on her and she felt again a guilty sense of dread about her own part in the suffering. The boy in her arms was fragile and hot with fever. She pulled him close. He must be just a few years younger than Jalil. He at least still had a hope of life. It seemed like a God-sent second chance. This time, she thought, I’ll do everything I can to save him, whatever he’s done.

  She closed her eyes and thought about Jalil. He’d been such a serious young man. But when he did have fun, it was usually boyish and always made her smile.

  Once, she’d been sitting in the back of the car as they made some endless, bumpy journey. She’d been deep in thought, listening to the wheeze of the broken air conditioning and watching the skeletal brown mountains run level with the road, when he and the driver had burst out laughing, chortling like naughty schoolboys.

  ‘What?’ She’d sat forward, tapping the back of the seat to get his attention.

  The driver’s eyes had slid into the rear-view mirror to meet hers, then darted away.

  ‘Very funny joke.’ Jalil, giggling, had twisted round to explain. His face was flushed. ‘This is very funny Afghan joke.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Jalil looked delighted. He’d launched with gusto into the business of telling the joke a second time, in English.

  ‘Two women were doing gossiping,’ he said, ‘and one woman said: oh, look at your costly gold bracelet! So nice! Your husband is very kind man. How I wish I had such a kind husband!’

  He’d broken off, giggling in anticipation.

  ‘So what did the other woman say?’

  ‘The other woman said: No, no, you are very fortunate and you don’t even know it. This gold bracelet is not from my husband. It is from yours!’

  When he got to the end, he and the driver had set each other off again while she’d watched, bemused, from behind.

  Now, thinking of it, she smiled, shaking her head in the silence. In many ways, he’d been little more than a boy. She should have taken better care of him. She opened her eyes and the blackness rushed in. How could she have known that the few thousand dollars he wanted would have bought his life? She imagined him in another future, studying in Pennsylvania, taking classes with American students who called him ‘the Afghan’ and asked him a hundred times: which one’s your country again? All of it, only in her mind.

  A
ref moaned and twisted his head against her chest. She felt along the ground for water and put the bottle to his lips. He was murmuring something. She reached to his face and stroked the clammy hair from his forehead, soothed him until he slipped again into sleep. He was feverish and had so little strength. She didn’t know how long he had left. She thought of Hasina. She must find her.

  The return to the desert blinded her. She stood blinking, drinking in the fresh air. The open land stretched in front of her, silent and bleached in the sunlight. She hurried along the track from the gully towards the village, sweating and breathing hard in the heat. Her mind was working frantically, her eyes fixed on her dusty boots. She would have to salvage something from the information she had. There was no other way. Phil was right. However strong her hunch, she couldn’t go with a story so full of holes and conjecture. The lawyers would pull it to pieces. But what did she have left? An anecdotal tale of an assault on an Afghan village. They could dress it up as something but it wasn’t a lead. Phil would be furious. When have I ever let you down? she’d said. Well, the answer was now.

  22

  The driver of the pickup must have seen her as soon as he crested the rise. The grunt of his engine was suddenly magnified. He came down the slope towards her with gathering speed, surfing on a cloud of dust. She turned to look, shielding her eyes. It wasn’t a military vehicle but a battered local one, its metalwork flashing with sunlight. She strained to see who was inside. The driver, a man, was alone.

  She stepped back off the track and into the corn. Her sight of the road was veiled now and she focused instead on the sound of the engine, a cheap diesel cough. The truck approached. As it got closer, the power of the engine was cut and it slowed, then, almost level with her, finally stopped. Silence. The drone of the flies around her head. Her own blood, loud in her ears. The metallic click of a safety catch. The truck door unlatched and opened and the heaviness of a man dropping to the ground. Should she run? If he had a gun, he’d shoot her anyway. He was already so close. No, she thought. He may be as nervous as I am. I’ll face him. Footsteps, stealthy, made their way towards her.

  She stepped out onto the track and the man turned at once to face her. A solid, broad man with an old-fashioned automatic weapon readied in his hands. He was wearing a dusty white salwaar kameez whose wide cotton trousers flapped at his ankles, and, on his head, a traditional square hat. The waves of his white beard and streaked moustache glistened with sweat.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought it was you.’ He smiled, but not pleasantly. ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘Karam.’ She looked at his hands on the weapon. He hadn’t relaxed them. She put her own hand on her heart and greeted him politely. ‘Salaam Alaikum.’

  He didn’t make the usual polite reply. Instead he gestured her towards the truck and ushered her forward. He opened the passenger door for her and stood guard while she took off her rucksack and climbed into the cab. The plastic seat was torn and spilling its innards of perished rubber. He slid into the passenger seat beside her, forcing her to move across until she was jammed against the gear stick, her pack at her feet. His thigh pressed hot against her leg. He pulled the door closed, forcing them more tightly together.

  She used the driving mirror to look over her shoulder into the open back. It was loaded with belongings. Chests fastened with rope. Tightly rolled carpets. Small pieces of furniture – stools, a carved table, a large decorated mirror in a wooden frame.

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘Of course.’ He had rested his gun across his knees, pointing towards her, his hands close to the trigger. His sharp eyes never left her face. ‘What did you expect? To stay here? I’m a rich man. As you know.’

  How much did he know about her suspicions? She couldn’t read him. His expression was cunning but gave nothing away. Had he concealed himself and watched her, as she unearthed his money? Or had someone else told him what she’d found?

  ‘I am sorry about your brother’s death.’ She kept her gaze level. ‘He seemed a kind man.’

  ‘He was my brother,’ he said. ‘But he was not like me. He was a simple man.’

  ‘How is Hasina?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘What do you expect?’

  ‘What will happen to her now?’

  ‘Now she is part of my family.’ He spoke as if he had acquired a new goat. ‘I am responsible for her. This is our culture.’

  ‘But you’re leaving?’

  ‘She is coming also. With me. With my wife.’ Ellen hesitated. She didn’t believe him. She knew Hasina’s passion for her son. She wouldn’t leave him willingly, knowing he was ill and helpless. This must be some trick of Karam’s.

  ‘I have heard you are a powerful person.’ He was looking at her oddly. ‘In your country.’

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’

  ‘I have heard your writing is respected by important people. By people with influence.’

  She didn’t reply, wondering where this was leading. The area was deserted. The chance of anyone coming past and seeing them was minimal.

  ‘You should write the truth.’ He lifted one hand from his gun and wagged a finger at her. ‘Only the truth.’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’

  ‘Sometimes the truth is a dangerous business.’ He looked forwards down the dusty track, at the cornfields, the stoop of the hill. His broad bulk squashed into her. The cab smelt of his stale sweat.

  ‘And what will you write,’ he said, ‘about your friend, the Major?’

  She felt her pulse quicken. His tone was serious. ‘What should I write?’

  ‘He is a murderer.’ He was watching her closely for reaction. ‘Will you write that?’

  She tried to keep her voice calm. ‘You mean he was responsible for killing your children,’ she said carefully. ‘Your son.’

  ‘Not just them.’ He smiled. ‘They will call that war. I mean killing your Afghan friend.’ He lifted his hand and mimed pulling the trigger of a pistol against her head. The smile was still on his lips. ‘Because he found out the truth.’

  For a moment her heart stopped. She shook herself.

  ‘Jalil?’ she said. ‘The Major didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Really?’ Karam threw back his head and laughed. His throat bobbed, making his beard wag. His eyes were screwed up into lines, submerged in his fleshy face. She waited, watching him. This was the last thing she expected. His laughter seemed hard-edged but genuine and she was perplexed. Finally he wiped his eyes and turned to face her. His cheeks were red.

  ‘Why do you think the Major paid me?’ He was looking at her as if she were a fool, but the laughter had erased some of the tension from his face.

  ‘He wanted your support. Your loyalty.’

  ‘My support?’ He looked at her almost fondly, as if any danger he had seen in her as an adversary had dissipated. He picked up the gun and stood it upright between his leg and the inside of the door. He put his fingers together in an arch, his hands supporting his chin. He stayed like that for a long moment, thinking. Then he turned to her abruptly.

  ‘I am leaving,’ he said. ‘I will tell you the truth and you must write it. Tell your people what sort of man they have sent to my country. Tell them everything. The deal he made with me, such a big secret from everyone, even his own commanders. That he killed your friend for knowing too much. And that he killed my children.’

  Ellen shook her head. She wanted to cover her ears, to shut out his voice. She ran her eyes across the peeling plastic of the dashboard, faded by the sun. It was pitted with marks, littered with the shrivelled remains of flies. She couldn’t bring herself to speak. Instead she sat silently beside him and listened.

  ‘He wanted a suicide bomb. A big shock for the people of Nayullah. A shock to make them welcome the Western soldiers. It would look like the work of the Taliban and frighten people. That’s what he paid me for. To find foolish young men loyal to me and eager to become martyrs. To make bombers
out of them.’

  She raised her eyes to meet his. He was staring at her, his eyes glistening, watching her confusion.

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Her thoughts were in turmoil. ‘He’d never do that. He just wouldn’t.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he?’ He was smiling now. ‘Who’d stop him? Who’d even know?’

  She bit her lip. Mack was a decent man. Jalil thought so. His men did too. The fog of war was one thing. But paying suicide bombers to blow up civilians? Mack would never do that.

  ‘No one knew.’ Karam had leaned in close to her. His sour breath was warm on her cheek. He seemed to be relishing her distress. ‘Your Major is an unusual man. Not a man who follows rules. You think Afghan lives matter to him? Not at all. Only British lives. His men in uniform. So – a few policemen and local women die but his men are a little safer. You think he worries about that?’

  She eased herself further away from him. ‘And Jalil?’

  Karam spread his hands on his knees. ‘He used him,’ he said. ‘Just as he used that other one, Najib. He needed someone to run back and forth to me, to take messages and hand over money. Much safer to use an Afghan than a Westerner who might make trouble.’ He sighed. ‘But Jalil was clever. When the bomb went off, he understood at once.’ He turned, looking at her through narrowed eyes. ‘Mack couldn’t let him live.’

  ‘Prove it. Any of it.’

  ‘How can I?’ Karam shrugged. His voice was quiet and serious. ‘I swear to you, by Allah Himself, it is the truth.’

  Ellen shifted her weight away from Karam and started to climb over the gear stick into the driver’s seat, dragging her rucksack behind her. He didn’t stop her. She had to throw her shoulder against the door to force it open. He was already climbing out of the passenger side, his gun in his hand. She felt too dazed to run.

  When he spoke again, his voice was lighter. ‘Hurry back to the village,’ he said. ‘Write your news.’ He pointed out beyond the fields towards open scrubland. It was a more exposed route but less circuitous than the one Hasina had shown her. ‘Allah will decide.’ He laughed to himself. ‘Will you write the truth and bring your own countryman to justice? We will leave that to Allah.’